The Omen - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[frederick]

Weirdly, Roger Ebert gave this movie **1/2, but gave the 2006 remake ***, which most people dismissed as a worthless line for line clone of the original. (And most people hailed the original as a classic).

[dustin]

Richard Donner hated the first cut of the film but was convinced by editor Stuart Baird to go back and reassemble it in the editing room.

[camila]

The shot of Lee Remick falling to the floor was done by building the "floor" on a (vertical) wall and dollying an upright Remick backward towards it.

[edgar]

David Warner was suffering terribly with psoriasis during filming to the extent that Gregory Peck took pity on him and paid for him to fly to Switzerland for treatment.

[willard]

The wine spilling in the back of the truck while David Warner's character is decapitated is supposed to suggest blood. The filmmakers could not actually show bloodshed at this point without obtaining an X rating.

[nina]

After finishing work on the film, special effects man John Richardson and his assistant were working on A Bridge Too Far (1977) in Holland. On their way back to their hotel one night their car was hit by a truck, and the assistant killed instantly.

[steve]

According to at least one biography of Gregory Peck, he took this role at a huge cut in salary (a mere $250,000) but was also guaranteed 10% of the film's box office gross. When it went on to gross more than $60 million in the U.S. alone, it became the highest-paid performance of Peck's career.

[toni]

Perhaps as a result of how badly Ellen Burstyn had been injured during the filming of "The Exorcist" (1973), Lee Remick declined to perform the scene where Katherine Thorn is pushed over the bannister by Damien and his tricycle and subsequently falls to the floor. She was purportedly offered extra money to perform the stunt, but still declined. Ultimately, a stand-in was used, together with a rig with a mattress on top of it for Lee to kneel on whilst clinging to the bannister. The fall was performed "in-camera" with a section of the floor built up against a wall, which she could be "dollyed" into to make it look as though she was falling.