"The Omen" was included in a recent book I read of THE 1000 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE! - ironic since fellow IMDb user Theo Robertson claims it was included as an entry in a similar book titled THE 50 WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME.
I've always really liked "The Omen" and, like Theo, think it is superior to "The Exorcist." It's more chilling and freaky and subtle. There isn't any fake pea soup here, either. Which isn't to say that "The Exorcist" isn't any good - but it hasn't fared as well over the years.
"The Omen" is just really good. It was released the same year as Exorcist if I'm not mistaken and Gregory Peck gives a fine performance. The part where a character's head is lopped off and rolls across a street in slow-motion, and then director Richard Donner cuts to a whole new sequence, is really chilling and bizarre.
It's that sort of eerie unexplained stuff that makes this, in my opinion, superior to a lot of the other stuff out there - i.e. many other trashy supernatural flicks that don't hold anything against this.
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