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Possessed Child Films
"Have no fear, little one! I am here to protect thee!"
There's a perennial misconception among film studios that to capture the children's market, you must include children in the picture. The theory is that, kids' attention spans being what they are, any stretch of celluloid longer than a few minutes populated entirely by grown-ups will cause them to grow weary and start throwing King Cones at the screen. Despite thousands of films having proved otherwise down the years, this Child Hero fallacy continues to get dragged out by film makers short of nous - see the recent Thunderbirds "re-wiring" for a prime example of the silver screen sub-species sociologists refer to as "Dairylea Punchables".
No, with a few honourable examples, Child Heroes are as much a turn off for children themselves as their adult chaperones. Child Villains, that's another matter. If kids are going have an appointed "representative" in a film, they want them to be causing mayhem and arseing about at the grown-ups' expense (preferably in ways the BBFC prefers not to let them look at), not saving ghostly stately homes from bungling council pirates and the like. Adults, too, relish the chance to legitimately wish a painful demise on a knee-high character. Of course, even the demonic child film has to be done well - for every neatly scary VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED there's a PROBLEM CHILD or a SHINING stinking the place out.
Fortunately, at the top of the starey-eyed tree, sits THE OMEN. Even the title still sends chills down your spine, we're betting, as you recall the legend that preceded this film in the school playground as word of mouth spread from the first person in your class to have seen it. And we're willing to have an additional each-way flutter on the fact that the biggest point of order was David Warner's plate glass decapitation scene. A kid called Adam Flint, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Tales of the Unexpected and Armchair Thriller plots, and liked to relate them in a precociously accomplished creepy storytelling manner, mesmerised us one overcast lunchtime with a retelling of the bit where Warner's intrepid journalist falls foul of the glowering one so vivid, we just had to see it. Thankfully, and we must admit rarely, the results lived up to expectations, right down to the bewildered expression on Warner's bouncing severed head.
And then of course there's the speared Patrick Troughton, Lee Remick's weird vertical fall, the baboon attack, the self-hanging nanny etc. etc. As a child, films are, to all intents and purposes, strings of set pieces (or "my best bits" as seasoned playground critics like to term them) and The Omen, of course, delivers these in spades. But once your tiny mind has settled down a bit and you've kicked the 20-a-day Spanish Gold habit, a return to the film turfs up endless new, subtler rewards. You can fully relish the marvellous playing of Warner, Troughton and Billie Whitelaw, for a start (you also baulk at the all-round boring uselessness of Gregory Peck, but allowances are easy to make). You notice the economy of the storytelling - compare the taut introduction of the child's demonic pedigree with The Shining's plodding "gathering storm" scenes and Scatman Crothers' folksy rabbiting on. You appreciate the wondrous cinematography, courtesy the legendary Gil Taylor (Ice Cold in Alex, Dr Strangelove, The Punch and Judy Man, etc.) which somehow makes everything look menacingly overcast by a brewing apocalypse, even the scenes set at night, or indeed indoors.
We needn't trouble ourselves with the myth-building extra-curricular cobblers here - the cod-biblical portentousness, the so- called "curse" of the film on the people involved - that's extraneous trivia for the likes of Mark Kermode to employ to help pretend they're scholars of cinema rather than just another pundit. The Omen may have collected its fair share of that sort of guff but, unlike THE EXORCIST et al., it doesn't need to trade on it to keep its head above water in the annals of film history. The film's the thing, and really, despite its occasional borrowings from Old School Hammer and the more gory American drive-in brethren, it manages to be genuinely unique, set apart from the rest of the horror genre, while simultaneously following (and in most cases providing a textbook illustration of) the grisly medium's very specific rules and regs.
The popular reputation of the film seems to fluctuate - the great and good often give it a thumbs-up. David Warner stands by it, as well he ought, and Richard Donner used a screening of The Omen to help entice Marlon Brando onto Superman. Nevertheless, it's just as often foundered in the critical opinion stakes, toiling away in the shadow of the inferior Exorcist. America's answer to Christopher Tookey, the dreary Michael Medved, included it in his tiresome book 50 Worst Movies of All Time. Even screenwriter David Seltzer bad- mouthed his own creation as 'silliness' - "I did it purely for the money" claimed the creator of Bird on a Wire. As such, it remains on the margins of pop culture folklore. Maybe a reassessment is round the corner, like the enormous one The Exorcist (not, to our mind, entirely deservingly) enjoys these days.
But never mind all that, it remains one of those films you can come back to every five years or so, and surprise yourself each time. Which is more than can be said for Damien: Omen II, which, despite pleasing our playground-dwelling selves back in the day, with crow- pecking and lift-crushing set pieces galore, evokes the law of diminishing returns as time passes. Omen III: The Final Conflict is exponentially worse still, revealing the final manifestation of the antichrist as, er, Sam Neill. But there's no overshadowing the original and best manifestation of trike-riding terror in British, and by stupidly jingoistic extrapolation world, cinema.
And then there's... there's XTRO. Which sounds like it should be great. It's a British horror, it takes place alternately in a block of flats and the good old gloomsville English countryside (authentically rendered in sludged-out old Eastmancolour, natch). And as with The Omen, its playground reputation for pre-pubescent chills preceded it. Sadly, this time the reality fell a country mile short of juvenile expectation.
A middle-aged Dad (played by one of the aircraft passengers off Paula Wilcox play The After Dinner Joke - yes, the cast connections are that obscure) is spirited away one day via some cheap in-camera effects, leaving bowl-cutted kid Tony (played by Kappatoo off Kappatoo!) and his mum (Countess Olga off CFF classic Sky Pirates!) to get on with their lives, and install a new daddy (er, some bloke off Whoops Apocalypse). Cut to three years later, and a murderous alien monster (actually Tik from Pebble Mill-troubling body-popping duo Tik and Tok in a sub-Giger latex wetsuit) graphically rapes a lone woman (played by one of the birds that peels a grape in the intro to episode three of Hitch Hiker's) in her authentically '70s- shabby eye-level grill kitchen. Said woman then proceeds to noisily give birth, Alien-style, on the kitchen floor, to Tony's fully-grown dad, in a scene rendered marginally less revolting by the use of some clearly false rubber legs.
Then, to keep the budget down, we cut to overlong domestic scenes in the new family's well-appointed flat. Nothing much happening here. Tony plays with an Action Man. Tony's mum swans about in the same chunky-knit poncho she seems to wear for the entire film. A Swedish au pair (played by - ah! A star! Maryam 'Living Daylights' D'Abo) is on hand to fail to keep an eye on the lad, and generally look decorative draped over furry rugs. Tony wakes up covered in fake blood. Old Daddy turns up (after trying to phone the flat and causing the handset to melt in an actually quite good effect), to poncho mum's consternation and Tony's delight. Dad eats Tony's pet snake's eggs. Tony goes all semi-demonic and brings a toy clown to portrayed-by-Widget-off-of-Through-the-Dragon's-Eye life. Lou Beale off Eastenders from the flat downstairs sticks her nose in, so Tony sends a giant Action Man (the other one off Tik and Tok in a plastic mask, natch) to jerkily bayonet her to death.
Then things go a bit funny. Dad takes poncho woman to the country cottage where he was abducted, while the midget clown helps Tony dispatch the rest of the adults via a panther, toy tank and, er, a mallet, then strings up D'Abo to make some kind of cobwebby alien incubator with the aid of a fridge and some giant mucus-lined eggs. And it goes on like this, waddling arbitrarily from rubbery set piece to rubbery set piece, with none of The Omen's style or atmos. If Denis Norden walked in with a clipboard after each grisly death and announced that our next gorefest involves Peter Sellers in a lift, no-one would bat an eyelid. As it is we have Bernard from the National Theatre of Brent driving a van - a fair swap.
Xtro was, you may not be surprised to learn, an "autered" work, the 'teur in question being one Harry Bromley Davenport, a sort of tramp's John Carpenter - yep, he directs, writes the "story" and single-handedly composed the film's soundtrack, which aims for Carpenter but, brilliantly, falls squarely into sub-Roger Limb Radiophonica which, with the muddy film stock and child actor, lends the whole venture an unmistakeable air of a Look and Read series gone sour. Ironic types do, of course, celebrate this film in their own way, but with stuff this unrelentingly weak you can positively feel the chips of tooth enamel flying out as they praise through clenched jaws. Still, the early '80s period atmos gives it a certain quaint watchability, something entirely absent from the belated sequels - Xtro II in 1990 being a rubbish sub-Aliens affair with Jan Michael Vincent, and 1995's instalment a terrible X-Files cash-in, with the titular alien resembling a cross between the saucer-eyed white foetus of then-popular style and a Bob Carolgees glove puppet, albeit one with a neat line in Elvis lip curls.
So there we have it. The perfect illustration of the right kind, as opposed to the wrong kind, of horror, via the medium of the malevolent pudding-basin hairstyle. Now if you'll excuse us, we're off to acquire a self-consciously retro hairdo of our own, along with an over-earnest, dryly superior speaking voice and a stolen place on the Newsnight Review banquette. There's a celluloid reputation to be revived! So until next time children, remember - When the Jews return to Zion, and a comet fills the sky, and the Holy Roman Empire rises... that's Movie! Movie!
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