You may notice that the number of movies within each percentage point is reducing so you should note that when I change a point up as the list counts down this is showing the improvement in my love for a movie. Strange saying love when the list is slowly descending into many more comedies and horror movies. This is the original movie that turned into a trilogy. This was released in 1976 and leant on the supernatural Satanic side of being scary. Directed by Richard Donner and starred Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Harvey Spencer Stephens, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Troughton, Martin Benson, and Leo McKern. I was told as a rumour that this was made as a stand alone movie that they realised they could stretch out to a trilogy and changed the ending whether there was any truth in that I don’t know. There were lots of stories about scary and eery stuff happening during to the production with strange thing happening to the team but if you take on a Satanic project like this then people get a bit twitchy. The Tri-Critic Sync Challenge scoreboard is not being changed with this one as I was scored in the middle of the lower IMDb giving this a 7.5 out of 10 and Rotten Tomatoes loved it with 86%.
The plot of this one is about the American diplomat in Rome is Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine is in hospital giving birth to a boy. His son is born and soon after dies, the hospital chaplain urges Robert to secretly adopt an infant whose mother died in childbirth. They call their new child Damien… (sorry I was waiting for the Ave Satani music to burst in there) Five years later and Robert is now the US Ambassador for the UK and mysterious events are plaguing the Thorn family. Dogs appearing, the Nanny hangs herself at his birthday party, Damien is terrified and aggressive when taken to a church. Weirdly a new Nanny arrives just after the last one hung herself. The new Nanny is here to protect Damien, around the same time a Catholic Priest arrives to speak to Robert about his son. The priest warns Robert of his son’s origins and hints that he is not human. He also says that Katherine is pregnant again but Damien won’t allow this child to be born. Later Katherine tells Robert she is pregnant but wants an abortion. The priest dies later in the day that they last meet and a photographer takes up the investigation of the death and the links to the Thorn family. Photo’s he’s taken have weird shadows in them which highlight the way they died. Seeing photo’s of himself with shadows around his neck. The two get together and trace the story back to a priest in Italy. They find him and he writes the name of a cemetery where they find the grave of Damien’s mother and I was just about to give away what they find. Lets just say there are dark forces in action trying to protect Damien whilst the Catholics are trying to confirm what they suspect and do away with this hideous fiend.
I’ve said this before and will say it again the music makes this movie more than the scares themselves. In some cases you cannot see anything scary but the soundtrack tells you some sh!t is going down. The portrayal of evil is classic in this movie, the scene of the presence of evil without there being an evil looking creature slobbering across screen and looming out of the darkness. The ‘evil’ in this movie is a five year old boy who on the face of it is not scary, he is not intimating, he is just a little boy in a suit. That is not scary but this movie swings itself into that position by having that soundtrack booming over the top. The way the sounds demonstrates that he has the powers over animals and using those animals to protect himself and kill anything or anyone that may stand in his way. Where so many other films have failed to convey a presence the way this does and it was a shining light in how to scare people with a simple trip to the church or a drive around Windsor Safari Park. If you haven’t seen this movie would I recommend it. This movie is a bit dated now and a little grey in areas but taking that onboard and still enjoy a scary movie, just remember to turn the sound up before you watch it!
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