VERY BAD OMEN
CHILLING movie franchise The Omen is back to
give cinemagoers the shivers this weekend, but did you know that the original flick is said to have been cursed?
The new film, above, which is the sixth in the series, is called The First Omen and is actually a prequel to the debut 1976 fright-fest.
It stars actress Nell Tiger Free as Margaret Daino, an American woman who uncovers a conspiracy to bring about the birth of the Antichrist, and her comaking stars include Bill Nighy.
But a real-life hex seemed to surround the making of The Omen, about Devil-child Damien Thorn, played by Harvey Stephens, who wreaks havoc and death.
From the start the production was plagued by a spate of mysterious mishaps as terrifying as its superh natural plot – and with disturbing similarities to it.
Among the spooky episodes were a strange series of lightning strikes, echoing a death by lightning rod in the film.
During filming in Rome, producer Harvey Bernhard narrowly escaped death from a bolt from the sky.
Three different planes carrying those involved in making The Omen were also struck by lightning within weeks.
Co-producer Mace Neufeld said: “It was the roughial est five minutes I’ve ever had on a commercial airline. It was very, very scary.”
One of the planes hit had Hollywood legend Gregory Peck on board.
Scary
In the movie he played US diplomat Robert Thorn, who agrees to swap Damien for his own stillborn son, without telling his wife Kathy, played by Lee Remick.
Off screen, the actor’s son, Jonathan, took his own life in 1975.
And more eerie events followed. A flight the crew were originally due to be on to film aerial shots crashed after hitting a flock of birds, smashing into a road destroying a car and killing its three passengers.
Freakishly, they were the wife and two children of one of the airfield’s pilots.