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.