Omen IV: Armageddon 2000 by Gordon McGill

 

(pb; 1983: fourth book in The Omen pentalogy)

Caveat: possible spoilers if you’re not aware of the events of The Final Conflict.

Eighteen years after the violent deaths in The Final Conflict, Damien Thorn’s body is dead, but his spirit and powers live on─this is because Carl Bugenhagen (who died in Damien—Omen II) was not able to pass on vital instructions on how to kill the Antichrist: one must stab Damien with all seven daggers of Meggido, in the shape of a cross, for him to truly die. Unfortunately, only one of the daggers─the one that ended his physical life─was used on Damien, so his infernal powers and mission were passed on to a new being. Father DeCarlo, present when Damien was killed in Final, knows this now and says as much in Armageddon─this is a mistake the brave old monk, even on his deathbed, means to correct.

The new person bearing Damien’s powers and hell-sourced drive is an unnamed seventeen-year-old boy (henceforth called The Boy in this review). The Boy, Damien’s dead-ringer-of-a-son, is a product of Kate Reynold’s animal-rough union with Damien in Final. The Boy is quietly tucked away at Pereford, a Thorn family estate─the same location where Damien lived in The Omen and Final.

The Boy is watched over by George, his old and loyal butler, and Paul Buher, seventy-year-old head of the Thorn corporation. Buher, seen and mentioned in Damien and Final, still grieves for the fallen Antichrist.

Buher’s mourning, anger, and sense of failure are exacerbated by The Boy’s attitude─he is a charmless, blunt, and arrogant child whose main mission is to destroy humankind to avenge his father’s death. The Boy, like Damien, brings about and spins terrorist attacks in the Middle East, and wants to kill the Christ child (who was born to gypsies in Final). Unlike his father, The Boy lacks charm and does not care about his role in prophecies: he is merely lashing out, living to inflict as much mass cruelty and destruction for its own sake.

This being an Omen story, bizarre and horrific Thorn-linked deaths occur. Among those hounded by the Antichrist’s son: Mary Lamont, a cultist who slew a child in Damien’s name in Final; Carol Wyatt, a reporter who begins snooping around Pereford; and Michael Finn, mentioned but not named in Final as the man who purchased the daggers of Meggido at an auction.

In Armageddon, it falls to Philip Brennan, US Ambassador to the Court of St. James, to stop Damien’s secret son. Brennan is kind, level-headed, not religious and can barely believe the wild stories about Damien, “the Thorn curse,” and Pereford, but as too-strange-to-be-coincidence events occur and the satanic death toll rises, Brennan is forced to acknowledge there may be some truth to Brother Francis and Father DeCarlo’s crazy tales even as others advance The Boy’s cataclysmic intent.

Armageddon─not a movie tie-in book─is a worthy sequel to David Seltzer’s Omen, one that not only matches the above-average, dark intensity of Seltzer’s story- and character-deepening source novel but answers the nagging question about DeCarlo and the monks being ignorant about the seven-daggers-to-kill-Damien requirement. From a reader’s point-of-view, McGill’s Conflict felt constrained, as if his creative hands were tied to the film’s choppy, hyper-focused storyline. In Armageddon McGill’s storyline flows better, there’s variation to its familiar set-up (even as it keeps true to established Omen elements, characterizations and themes) and it goes for broke in its raw, macabre finish, suitably ending on an abrupt, truly B-flick ending that somewhat mirrors Final’s.

McGill also brings more of the Omen’s inherent black humor to the fore (e.g., the fate of Damien’s corpse) as well as equally perverse, almost satirical twists and callbacks that elevate Armageddon, make it more fun and unpredictable (in parts). Followed by Omen V: The Abomination by Gordon McGill.

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A third film sequel to The Omen (1976), Omen IV: The Awakening, aired on TV/Fox channel on May 20, 1991. (The previous Omen films were theatrical releases.) Co-starring Don S. Davis (Stargate: SG-1, 1997-2007) and Michael Lerner (Elf, 2003), Awakening is not based on Armageddon.

Resident Alien: The Suicide Blonde by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse

 

(pb; 2013, 2014: graphic novel, collecting issues 0-3 of Resident Alien Volume 2 of the six-volume Resident Alien graphic novel series, published by Dark Horse Comics.)

From the back cover

“An alien explorer, stranded in the Pacific Northwest years for his home world, but he’s enamored with ours─especially when it comes to solving murder mysteries! Undercover alien, Dr. Harry Vanderspiegle seeks to clear the name of a friend who’s blamed for a college girl’s death, so he leaves the safety of small-town Patience, USA, to hunt for clues in Seattle. He doesn’t know that several federal agents are obsessed with Harry’s crashed starship and the possibility of capturing the compassionate extraterrestrial!”

Review

Like its previous graphic novel, Welcome to Earth!, Blonde is an intriguing, fun, short and character-interesting read, with a solid, possible murder mystery thrown into the mix. Dry humor again underlines some of the characters and situations as well as other nuanced emotional elements with story turns that are mini-twists and natural character progressions─a further indication of Resident‘s excellence (thus far). Things appear to be heating up for Harry although he doesn’t know it yet. Looking forward to the next entry in the six-volume series, Alien Resident: The Sam Hain Mystery.

The Final Conflict by Gordon McGill

 

(pb; 1980: movie tie-in novel, based on Andew Birkin’s screenplay. Third book in The Omen pentalogy.)

From the back cover

“Around the globe, drought, famine, and flood are striking down helpless millions. And everywhere there is trouble, Damien Thorne’s followers can be found─almost before disaster strikes─ready to offer aid to the pitiful survivors.

“Damien, the handsome, thirty-two-year-old head of one of the world’s most powerful corporations and certain to be president of the United States by the time he’s forty, Damien, believed to be the son of Satan, who is relentlessly reaching out to claim the Earth for the forces of darkness. . .

“Now is the time of prophecy, the beginning of the end for mankind. But where is the promised Messiah to save the world from ultimate evil. . .?”

Review

Final is a solid second book sequel to David Seltzer’s The Omen. Like its predecessor movie tie-in novel, Joseph Howard’s Damien—Omen II, it has the same virtues and play-it-safe drawbacks of its subgenre: Final is well-written, the characters and their relationships are well-sketched, its pacing is a deft, series-consistent balance of backstory, characterization, action, and horrifying death scenes. Despite that, the book adds little to the story or characters, although its tone is more perverse (e.g., Damien’s Black Chapel inside his Pereford house, where he was raised by Robert and Katherine Thorn), and McGill, when writing about one of The Omen’s satanic priests, calls him “Father Tassone” (Edgardo Emilio Tassone), Seltzer’s book-version name for the priest. In the 1976 film version of The Omen, Tassone was called Father Brennan.

One obvious thing─possibly an egregious flaw─is that most of the priests in the movie tie-in sequels (aside from Carl Bugenhagen, who died in Damien) think they need to stab Damien with one of the Crucifixion-hilted daggers, when they need to use seven, in a cross-like pattern. How did that vital information escape the priests’ attention?

Final’s ending has an abrupt, low-budget B-movie finish, appropriate when one considers the hard-cut, not-quite-choppy cinematic feel of Final. While not a standout entry in its series or subgenre, it’s modestly entertaining, a good writer toeing the line of his work-for-hire subgenre.

Followed by Gordon McGill’s Omen IV: Armageddon 2000, a non-movie tie-in, and related to the 1991 television movie (Omen IV: The Awakening) in series name only (their storylines are completely different).

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Final's film version, bearing the same title, was released stateside on March 20, 1981. Graham Baker directed it, from a screenplay by Andrew Birkin.

Sam Neill played Damien Thorne. Lisa Harrow played Kate Reynolds. Barnaby Holm played Peter Reynolds.

Rossano Brazzi played DeCarlo.

Don Gordon played Harvey Dean. Leueen Willoughby played Barbara Dean.

Evidence of Love by John Bloom and Jim Atkinson

 

(pb; 1984: crime nonfiction)

From the back cover

“They were two suburban mothers who attended the same church, went to the same parties, looked after each other’s kids. In the small-town Texas world they shared, liefe seemed peaceful and pleasant. Yet underneath the surface, pretty blonde Candy Montgomery and schoolteacher Betty Gore were simmering with unspoken frustrations, unanswered needs. And one hot summer day it would all explode in the laundry room of Betty Gore’s home─as the concrete walls rang with the blows and screams of an ax striking forty-one terrible times.

“Here is the incredible true story of the murder trial that made headlines across the country. . . the unthinkable crime that ripped away the serene façade of a quiet Texas community to show the passions and jealousies that boiled underneath. You will come to know the world of Candy Montgomery and her friend Betty Gore and you will wonder how such a monstrous thing could happen.”

 

Review

Evidence is an excellent, detailed-with-a-hint-of-mystery true crime book that is an immediately reader-immersive work. Bloom and Atkinson provide just enough─a lot of─background about those who experienced Evidence’s events as well as background on the places and institutions where they happened. This is an intense, fact-driven, steadily paced, and occasionally grisly-but-non-exploitative read, one of the more emotionally involving books I’ve read recently, and easily one of the best true crime books I’ve read in a long time. I can see why Bloom (a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs) and Atkinson are award-winning journalists. 

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The resulting television movie, A Killing in a Small Town, aired on CBS on May 22, 1990. Stephen Gyllenhaal directed it, from a teleplay by Cynthia Cidre.

Barbara Hershey played Candy Morrison. Brian Dennehy  (First Blood, 1982) played Ed Reivers. John Terry played Stan Blankenship. Richard Gilliland played Dale Morrison. Lee Garlington (Cobra and Psycho III, both 1986) played Peggy Blankenship.

Hal Holbrook played Dr. Beardsley. Matthew Posey (Mr. Brooks, 2007) played Norman Billings. James Monroe Black, billed as James Black, played Dr. Giles. Dennis Letts (A Perfect World, 1993) played Chief McAlester. Marco Parella (A Perfect World, 1993) played Rick Slocum.

Picnic on Nearside by John Varley

 

(pb; 1980: science fiction anthology. Originally published as The Barbie Murders.)

Overall review

Picnic is a bold, ambitious blast of science fiction free love at the world. Many of its key characters are young people─worldwise children with adult experiences to back their age-accelerated awareness up and technology to pull off fantastic science-fiction feats. That includes non-explicit (mentions of) sex, sometimes incest (which no longer, in Varley’s future centuries, bears out genetically questionable fruits), and if those notions are upsetting for you, Picnic is not the book for you.

Picnic also shares themes and references Varley espoused in his Gaea trilogy (Titan, Wizard, Demon), e.g., a love of cinema and 1950s-era culture, repercussion-free promiscuity, a flouting of conservative culture rules, and advanced maturity and awareness beyond the limits of one’s flesh.

This is an excellent collection, some stories better than others, but all interesting (in a good way), unique and thematically solid (in relation to Picnic’s other stories and in general). Worth owning, this, if you’re not put off by gender-fluid, tastefully stated explorations of love beyond physical boundaries and age.

 

Review, story by story

“Bagatelle”: A depressed cyborg-nuclear bomb (Hans) threatens to blow up the space city of New Dresden. Can a seemingly crazy explosives expert (Roger Birkson) and a police chief (Anna Bach) defuse Hans in time? Excellent, fun, and often unpredictable story.

 

“The Funhouse Effect”: Multiple disasters aboard a tourist comet (Hell’s Snowball) make two of its passengers (Quester and Solace) question the dangerous surreality of their situation. The twist is not unexpected, but the ride is a blast.

 

“The Barbie Murders”: A police detective (Lt. Anne-Louise Bach) is tasked with a near-impossible task: find a killer in Anytown, a religious megacult haven for those who’ve had surgery to look and live like a conformist Barbie doll. Intriguing story, solid ending.

 

“Equinoctial”: A human woman─a Conser─sharing her body and her awareness with an implanted Symb (Symbiotic Space-Environment Organism) named Equinox, floats around the rings of Saturn when her Symb is taken from her by Engineers, religious fanatics who want to paint one of Saturn’s rings red. This theft impels the long-lived woman (Parameter) to retrieve her Symb, who is incubating Parameter’s unborn children. For Parameter, this is the start of an unpredictable and bumpy mission. Clever, satirical, funny, perverse, imaginative, and sporting notions of hippie-era free love (not unlike Varley’s Gaea trilogy), “Equinoctial” is one of my favorite stories in this collection.

 

“Manikins”: Solid story about a student (Evelyn) who interviews a man-hating paranoid schizophrenic (Barbara), a life-changing experience.

 

“Beatnik Bayou”: On Lunar, a planet where age and gender are physically, easily changeable, a thirteen-year-old Lunarian boy (Argus-Darcy-Meric) is about to go through a Change, when he transfers from one life-teacher to another. His current educator, Cathay (a middle-aged man physically regressed to Argus’s age since age seven) is about to age-regress, educate a new student.

Things get complicated when a mentally ill─possibly sociopathic─woman (Tiona) stalks Cathay, Argus and their friends, then files a complaint against them with the Central Computer, Lunar’s legal authority. This not only jeopardizes the scheduled transitions of Argus, Cathay, and their friends, but could get them executed.

 

“Beatnik” is one of my favorite stories in Picnic. This offbeat, playful, thematically mature and warm-hearted tale is delightful and full of unpredictable turns with its imaginative, free-love-meets-ancient-Greece-and-1950s-America mindset (adult teachers can─possibly expected to─have sex with their adolescent students in certain situations, à la the way ancient Greeks did. . . a thirteen-year-old Lunarian is practically the equivalent of an eighteen-year-old in California, United States.) If this last aspect bothers you (there’s no explicit sex in “Beatnik”), you probably shouldn’t read this anthology.

 

“Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe”: On the artificial bubble island of Pacifica beneath the surface of Pluto, a memory-infused, teenage clone of an old man (Piri) resists leaving and growing older─things change quickly with the arrival of Lee, a beautiful dream of a woman, who is more than she appears to be.

This is an excellent, cinematic-intense, and unique reversal-twist of a sort-of-coming-of-age story, memorable for its setting.

 

“Lollipop and the Tar Baby”: A young woman (Xanthia), hovering near Pluto in a lifeboat ship, is contacted by a talking (via radio) black hole. They form a friendship, one that dramatically alters her relationship with the woman (Zoe) who created her through cloning. “Lollipop” is a fun, dark-humored, emerging-identity story.

 

“Picnic on Nearside”: On the moon, two hundred-plus years after the Invasion of Earth, a twelve-year-old boy (Fox, who has the maturity, awareness, and many of the experiences of a seventeen-year-old) and his same-age friend (Halo, no longer a boy but a sexy woman) head to the dangerous, metropolitan ruins of Archimedes. Archimedes, during dark and immediately post-Invasion times, was humanity’s first enclave, but was abandoned because its view of Earth bummed people out─but is there more to it than what people initially saw?

Damien—Omen II by Joseph Howard

 

(pb; 1978: movie tie-in novel, based on Stanley Mann and Mike Hodges’s screenplay. Second book in The Omen pentalogy.)

From the back cover

Little by little, one of the world’s most powerful families is close to being destroyed. And no one seems to know why. Those who suspect the truth do not live to reveal it.

“Only thirteen-year-old Damien Thorn seems immune from the bizarre accidents claiming the lives of those around him. Damien, whose own father tried to kill him seven years ago. . . Damien, whose loving foster family is learning the meaning of hellish fear. . . Damien, who is leaving behind the seeming innocence of youth to fulfill the terrifying prophecy foretold long ages ago. . . Damien, who is discovering that it is not, after all the meek but the master of ultimate evil who shall inherit the earth!”

Review

Damien is a solid, less dread-atmospheric follow-up to David Seltzer's The Omen. The writing is good, the characters and their relationships are well-sketched, the pacing of the book is an entertaining balance of backstory, characterization, action and kill scenes. Having said that, this first sequel is not as heady a B-movie thrill as its predecessor, a movie novelization that does little, if anything, to expand on the screenplay on which it’s based.

Damien is a fun, blast-through read, one that does not transcend its movie tie-in genre, but is still mildly entertaining─just don’t expect the over-the-top, beyond-its-source-flick thrills that Omen, a high-mark for movie tie-ins, trafficked in. Followed by another movie tie-in novel, Gordon McGill’s The Final Conflict (1981).

Additional note: In Damien (book and film) Richard Thorn’s brother is called “Richard,” the name given Damien’s human father in the film version of Omen. The book version of Omen calls Damien’s human father “Jeremy.”

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The film version of Damien was released stateside on June 9, 1978. Don Taylor and an uncredited Mike Hodges directed the film, from a screenplay by Hodges and Stanley Mann.

William Holden played Richard Thorn. Lee Grant played Ann Thorn. Jonathan-Scott Taylor played Damien Thorn. Lucas Donat played Mark Thorn.

An uncredited Ian Hendry played Michael Morgan. An uncredited Leo McKern reprised his role of Carl Bugenhagen. Sylvia Sidney played Aunt Marion. Elizabeth Shepherd played Joan Hart. Allan Arbus, billed as Alan Arbus, played Pasarian. Meshach Taylor played Dr. Kane. Nicholas Pryor played Charles Warren. Lew Ayres played Paul Atherton.

Robert Foxworth played Paul Buher. Lance Henriksen played Sgt. Neff. 

The Omen by David Seltzer

 

(pb; 1976: movie tie-in book. First book in The Omen pentalogy.)

From the back cover

“A young nursemaid dies for the sake of little Damien. . .

“A priest is speared to death for revealing the horrifying truth about the birth of Damien. . .

“In a peaceful zoo, animals rend themselves to bits in a death frenzy caused by the sight of Damien. . .

“For a world-renown diplomat and his wife, ‘accident’ follows ‘accident,’ from Rome to London to Jerusalem, as they are stalked by a terror they cannot understand, a terror that centers on their son Damien. . . and his ominous hidden birth mark. . .”

 

Review

Seltzer’s movie tie-in book (from his own script) for The Omen (1976) is an above-average work for the genre. Seltzer fleshes out the melodramatic, B-flick structure of the movie’s paranoid and creepy storyline by providing backstories for several characters in the book version (e.g., Edgardo Emilio Tassone, shown as Father Brennan in the film version). Not only that, more Biblical-based background is provided─most of it made up by Seltzer. This, like the expanded characterizations, is effective, further suspending reader disbelief regarding Omen’s over-the-top events, overall tone, and characters. It helps that Seltzer couches Omen’s events in a way that it’s possible that the satanic conspiracy might be a cultic delusion─at least up to certain points (thank film director Richard Donner for insisting that the script, upon which the book is based, be written this way).

Omen, for its genre, is an excellent, B-flick entertaining potboiler of a satanic conspiracy thriller with over-the-top notions and characters, elements that were reflected in the blockbuster, wildly silly and fun film.

Those who read the book and compare it to the movie may also note name changes to the some of the characters (e.g., Chessa, the book-version/suicidal nanny, is called Holly in the film, named after the actress who played her, Holly Palance─IMDb, in its listing of her character, simply calls her “Nanny”).

Followed by four book sequels, the first of which is another movie tie-in, Damien—Omen II by Joseph Howard.

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The film was released stateside on June 25, 1976. Richard Donner directed the film, from David Seltzer’s screenplay.

Gregory Peck played Robert Thorn (book version: Jeremy Thorn). Lee Remick played Katherine Thorn. Harvey Stephens played Damien Thorn.

Holly Palance played Holly/Nanny (book version: Chessa Whyte). Billie Whitelaw played Mrs. Blaylock/Sister Teresa/B’aalock. Martin Benson played Father Spiletto.

David Warner played Keith Jennings (book version: Haber Jennings). An uncredited Leo McKern played Carl Bugenhagen.

Patrick Troughton played Father Brennan (book version: Edgardo Emilio Tassone). Anthony Nicholls played Dr. Becker. Robert Rietty played Monk.Tommy Duggan played Priest. 

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A remake was released stateside on June 6, 2006 (get it?). Directed by John Moore, IMDb attributes its source material to David Seltzer’s 1976 screenplay.

Liev Schreiber played Robert Thorn. Julia Stiles played Katherine Thorn. Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick played Damien Thorn (ages four to five).

Giovanni Lombardo Radice played Father Spiletto. David Thewlis played Keith Jennings. Pete Postlethwaite played Father Brennan. Michael Gambon played Bugenhagen.

Mia Farrow played Mrs. Baylock. Harvey Stephens, who played Damien in the original film, played "Tabloid Reporter #3."

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The television show Damien aired on A&E on March 7, 2016. On May 20th of the same year, A&E cancelled it after one season.

Damien, ignoring the storylines of Damien: Omen II (1978) and The Final Conflict (1981), reimagined Damien Thorne as a thirty-year-old war photographer who─after years of not being aware of his satanic destiny─is confronted by it during a photo shoot. This drawn-out, angsty, cultists-grooming-Damien-for-hellish-majesty show had Damien (played by Bradley James) resisting the insanity of the situation, though he was slowly succumbing to it.

Other actors in the show included: Megalyn Echikunwoke (as Simone Baptiste); Omid Abtahi (as Amani Golkar); Barbara Hershey (as Ann Rutledge); Robin Weigert (as Sister Greta Fraueva); and Scott Wilson (as John Lyons).

Resident Alien: Welcome to Earth! by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse

 

(pb; 2011, 2012, 2013: graphic novel, collecting issues 0-3 of Resident Alien. Volume 1 of the six-volume Resident Alien graphic novel series, published by Dark Horse Comics.)

From the back cover

“Surviving a crash landing on our planet, a stranded alien seeks refuge in the small town of Patience, USA, where he hides undercover as a semiretired doctor. Masking his appearance using his unique mental abilities and now known as Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, all the alien wants is to be left alone until he’s rescued. However, when the town’s real doctor dies. ‘Dr. Harry’ is pulled into medical service─and also finds himself smack dab in the middle of a murder mystery!”

 

Review

Welcome is a fun, intriguing, short and character-interesting read, with a solid murder mystery element thrown into the mix. The artwork is pleasing to the eye, not too busy with unnecessary details, reflecting the quiet, (relative to cities) simplicity of small-town life, and the quick flashbacks and ending promise more interesting Vandespeigle-centered stories. Followed by Resident Alien: The Suicide Blonde.

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Created by Chris Sheridan, the resulting, different-from-its-source-comic-book SyFy Channel show debuted on the network on January 27, 2021.

Alan Tudyk played Harry Vanderspiegle. Sara Tomko played Asta Twelvetrees. Gary Farmer played Dan Twelvetrees. Corey Reynolds played Sheriff Mike Thompson. Elizabeth Bowen played Deputy Liv Baker.

Levi Fiehler played Mayor Ben Hawthorne. Meredith Garretson played Kate Hawthorne. Alice Wetterlund played D’arcy.