Saturday, June 1, 2024

The First Omen

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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated 1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going to review every single movie I see.  I’m going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future).  You can always ask me why I gave the ratings for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses under the ‘About Me’ section).
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The First Omen                                                           EH/OK
Sequels and remakes are very frowned upon, but the prequel deserves as much hate too.  It’s so easy to make an “origin” story to an original one, but maybe some of us (probably most of us) don’t want to know what happened before the movies we know so well.  Unless it was intended from the get-go, like Pearl, which surprisingly made X a much better movie the second time, but rarely are they ever planned; sequels aren’t even planned in many cases!  This occurs before the 1976 film helmed by Richard Donner (Rome, 1971, to be exact); we see how little Damien came to be.  I was never the hugest fan of The Omen, let alone the franchise (you can read my opinions on it in this entry from one of my other blogs---https://vampireclown82-2.blogspot.com/2021/06/heres-your-signs.html).  [My favorite satanic flick from that era is probably Rosemary’s Baby.  I like The Exorcist better than The Omen, but both are fine.  This film actually felt more akin to Rosemary’s Baby than The Omen].  Was this prequel unnecessary?  Yes and no.  Yes, because it is strictly a companion piece to the original film; without it this would feel a bit lacking and part of a larger story, meaning it doesn’t stand firm on its own.  It is a bit of a bore too (it’s roughly two hours).  No, because thematically it was well-thought out, logical even, making it somewhat of a serviceable companion piece (the church sure has effed up intentions here, unsurprisingly).  I may not have hated it, but I also could’ve lived without its existence.  5/31/2024

Bonus reviews:

Pigs (1973)                                                                  EH
This is the synopsis I saw on a social media post pertaining to the anniversary of this 1973 film---The owner of a diner kills people and feeds them to a bunch of pigs.  How the hell did I never see this movie before?  [It came out a year after The Last House on the Left, the same year as The Exorcist, and just a year before both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas!].  Watching it I can see why it hasn’t been promoted in the horror community much (Tubi is one of the channels it’s available on---meaning free, with ads).  It is poorly made, making it a classic case of “it probably looked a whole lot better on paper.”  I’ll tell you what, if it had a little bit of a better budget this could’ve been a passable gritty B-movie from one of the best decades for cinema.  An alternate title was Daddy’s Deadly Darling, which makes more sense than Pigs; Pigs just sounds cooler (apparently other alternate titles were The 13th Pig, Love Exorcist, Blood Pen, Daddy’s Girl, Horror Farm, and The Killers; at least two of those would’ve sounded cool).  A woman leaves an institution (wherein she was in for murdering her daddy, arguably excusably, hence “Daddy’s Deadly Darling”) for the countryside and ends up at a café in need of a waitress; this café is run by that owner mentioned above in that synopsis who also owns those aforementioned pigs that developed a taste for human flesh after an incident.  Why I mentioned that Daddy’s Deadly Darling makes more sense than Pigs is because the story seems to follow the “crazy” lady more than anything else; the pigs do make appearances throughout, but not as much as you would think for something called Pigs, and you don’t really see them chomping on human flesh (being that it came out in 1973 I can sort of understand, I guess).  There is violence at times though, caused by humans.  Like I said, this could’ve definitely been a better flick with a better budget.  Unfortunately, its poor quality likely contributed to its obscurity.  5/25/2024

Victim No More
(haiku review)
40-minute short.
Friday the 13th fan film.
Fine, for fans.  YouTube.  5/30/2024

*My reviews for other Friday the 13th fan films are in here---https://vampireclown82.blogspot.com/2021/08/friday-13th-fan-films.html*

Other movies and TV show(s) I’ve seen and their ratings (see above):

American Fiction  >>>OK

Children of Sin  >>>OK

EO  >>>OK
   (In Polish, Italian, and French with subtitles)

Life of Belle  >>>EH

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls  >>>EH/OK

The Seeding  >>>EH/OK

Sympathy for the Devil (2023)  >>>OK

Under the Bridge  >>>OK
      (Hulu; 8 episodes)

---Sean O.
6/1/2024

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