I just recently re-watched this and the remake...there's really no fair comparison.

Gregory Peck wins over Liev Schreiber, but then Peck is the better actor.

Lee Remick is far more believable than Julia Stiles who doesn't seem to convey the same earnest fear and suspicion.

David Thewlis is a good actor, but in bit parts he always seems to phone it in and David Warner was just the more believable photographer.

I mean, the 1976 The Omen is dated, but that's not a bad thing and in this case you get the sense that they were doing something fresh and really trying to frighten you...and they did.

By comparison the remake is paint by numbers and offers nothing new.

1976 is, hands down the more frightening, more dramatic, and more suspenseful film. Compared to 2006. 1976 is believable.

OK, so at times this is a bit far-fetched, even for a horror movie, but I reckon it is still my favourite from the genre made in the 1970s. From a rather murky start in a Roman hospital, we see Gregory Peck and wife Lee Remmick head to London where he is to be US Ambassador - along with their new baby sone "Damien" (cue the squeaking violins). Not long after their arrival, their nanny commits suicide - rather gruesomely, as it happens - facilitating the arrival of "Mrs. Baylock" (a rather menacing Billie Whitelaw). As their son ages, and fuelled by some rather ghastly prophesies by Patrick Troughton's "Father Brennan", Peck slowly concludes that there is something a little dodgy about his son. Thing is, can he thwart the evil contained within the young boy? Richard Donner does well to build and to sustain a sense of peril from pretty much the outset of this film - aided, ably, by a Jerry Goldsmith score that uses maniacal choral vocals and strings to keep you behind the sofa. Peck isn't at his best, and some of the scenes - especially in the graveyard with the Baskervillian hounds - do stretch the imagination, but for the most part it seizes your attention and keeps it. I have to admit to being disappointed by the ending - just why did the police give chase?

For whatever reason never saw The Omen before and while it has its moments, the last 10-15 minutes were particularly great, the middle part plodded along at a slow pace with little happening that was interesting outside a scene or two. All in all, it was okay but maybe a tad overrated. **3.25/5**

To be fair, I could probably rate this as "Good" instead of just "Fair". However, once again, I'm about 45 years late to the dance and never saw this when it first came out, so - by today's standards - I can only consider it "kinda sorta okay". It's not "scary" by any stretch (remember, I'm grading this by 2022 standards) but it _does_ have at least one decent kill scene in it. The story was simply implausible by any stretch of the imagination, and especially for someone with a strong background and knowledge of Scripture. Did it make for good theater? Sure…but so did _The Fly_ and _The Thing_ and a host of other completely implausible storylines. It would have been considerably better, IMO, had they clarified the whole backstory of Damien; I still have no idea who his mother was or how she came to be pregnant with "the child of the Devil". All we know (from what the movie tells us) is that Damien is just that: "the child of Satan". No explanation, no story, nothing about him except his mother was "an apostate of hell". (For the record, that was a gross misuse of the word _apostate_; someone should have done their homework. But I digress…) As far as what a couple of the other reviews have mentioned, however, it **IS** best served when watched/observed by 1970's standards...not by today's. And by 1970's standards, I can see how and why this movie was such a polarizing film. Although to the learned Bible scholar, the idea is ludicrous, the execution of the story (even minus a solid backstory) was good, the soundtrack was excellent, the "fear factor" was there (probably much more back in the day) to make this a good "creepy" movie, and yes, the conclusion was quite unique. If you can handle watching "old" movies and, like me, you never saw this in its prime, I would say it's worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/SDZmFNpPmF4