Too Scary; Didn't Watch - Bonus Episode: THE OMEN

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

To hear the full bonus episode, head to Patreon.com/tsdwpodcast and join us in Toni F*cking Collette's Inner Circle. Otherwise, see you here on Wednesday where we will be recapping GREEN ROOM. Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and additional content! Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy. Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi everyone, welcome to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, bonus episode two of two from February. This is Emily. This is Emily. This is Emily. And this is Sammy. Tony told me she couldn't make it today. Darn. But she loves us all so much with her whole heart.

Her whole heart. She loves us. She's listening in. She's listening in like always. Like she always is. Guys, what would we do without Toni's love and support? Honestly, she's there for us every step of the way. She's our rock.

She's absolutely our rock. She's our rock. I don't even want to consider what I would do without it because I couldn't be without it. Couldn't think about it for one dang second. Thank you, Toni. Thank you for all that you do for us and our wonderful inner circle. This month's theme

has been demons, because you know February, the spookiest month of them all. Every month's a spooky month with us, baby. Hey, baby. I can't wait to hear about this movie, Sammy. I can't wait to hear about this movie, Sammy.

I can't wait to tell you about it. And you guys voted on it. And you chose The Omen. We threw a couple different demon movie options. You guys went with The Omen, a classic that I

had never seen. So this was fun for me. So thank you. It came out in 1976. It was directed by Richard Donner, written by David Seltzer, starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick,

Harvey Stevens, David Warner, Billy Whitelaw, and Patrick Trofton. And it is streaming on Hulu.com. Hulu.com. www.hulu.com. Gregory Peck.

Ooh. Ooh, right? Ooh, classic. Yeah, a lot of people say that after To Kill a Mockingbird that this is his best film. Must be pretty good. They remade this, right? Aren't there a couple remakes?

Sequels and remakes, I believe. There's at least one from 2006. I don't know a dang thing about this movie. I just did feel like the only the omen I was aware of was the 2006. I did not know that there was a 70s one until a patron asked about it. I don't remember the 2006 one at all. I don't remember when it came out. I don't remember hearing about it. 2006.

Who is in it? Any notable celebs? The people, oh my gosh, it's rated so poorly, so, so, so, so badly. Julia Stiles. Okay. Liev Schreiber. Shut up. Julia Stiles is in it.

Mia Farrow. It must be good. Mia Farrow. Oh, I love David Thewlis. Michael Gambon. Don't know him. Not rated well at all. People don't like it. David Thewlis is Professor Lupin. He is indeed

Michael Gambon. Professor Dumbledore. Oh, I didn't know his name. Wow, so a real Harry Potter reunion. I'm telling you, every British actor is in Harry Potter and that's just how it is. That's just how it is. If they're British, they've been real Harry Potter reunion. I'm telling you, every British actor is in Harry Potter and that's just how it is. That's just how it is. If they're British, they've been in Harry Potter and you can just count on it. It's true. You take it right to the bank.

You take it right to the bank. And speaking of bank, let's talk about some numbers for this movie. Perfect segue. The budget was $2.8 million and it earned $61 million and good for them. And good for them. Absolutely good for them.

It earned $61 million. That feels like a lot of money for that time, right? That seems like it must have been a big, big old hit. Yeah, it was a big old hit. I mean, it was after The Exorcist, so I feel like... People were like, oh, hell yeah. We remember this. We like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet The Exorcist is probably part of why this movie was a big success. It was nominated for two Oscars, which I feel like in our Get Out episode we talked about horror movies not being nominated for Oscars and I thought I had a list of all movies that had and this was not on it but I think that list was of horror movies that had been nominated for Best Picture

this was nominated for Best Score and Best Original Song and it won Best Score and the composer Jerry Goldsmith didn't, he chose not to attend the Oscars that year because he had lost

so many times and he didn't want to be there and lose again. No! And he won. No! That's like a bad dream. That's terrible. Oh god. Oh, sorry Jerry. That stinks. That stinks Jerry but you've still got an oscar and that is cool that is cool good for you jerry for you jerry and this was this is kind of uh reminding me of

in our january bonus episode alfred hitchcock um taking a uh you know percentage rather than a fee and gregory peck apparently took the role at a huge cut in salary it says here a mere 250 000 in 1976 a mere 250 000 but he was also guaranteed 10 of the film's box office and so when it went on to gross more than $60 million, it became his highest paid performance ever. I've said it once. I'll say it again. This is why you believe in yourself. You've got to believe in yourself. And Gregory Peck was actually, I believe, retired at the time.

And he chose to come out of retirement to do this movie. And to make a lot of money. And it paid off for him. And you probably won't be surprised to hear that we have some actors' rights issues. Oh, I'm not surprised, but I don't love to hear it. Here we go. You know, they're not as bad as The Exorcist. But here we go.

So, Harvey Stevens plays Damien, the little boy in the movie. And because he was so young, Richard Donner, the director, found that the best way to direct him was to provoke genuine reactions before the camera. For example, when Damien is angry at being taken to church, Donner got his peeved facial expression by shouting to Stevens off camera, What are you looking at, you little bugger? I'll clobber you! What? Oh my god! He's just yelling at

a child to get the shot. Oh my god. They need to take a page from The Babadook and do that little... Do a different movie, yeah! Do a little over the shoulderadook and uh do that little do a different movie yeah do a little over the shoulder on an adult on their knees exactly and there is a scene in the movie in which a bunch of baboons attack the car i can't wait till we get to that part.

I know. I know. It is quite an interesting scene. So to make the baboons attack the car, an official from the zoo was in the back seat of the car with a baby baboon. Oh, my God. But the baboons had no response at all. Oh.

They did not care and we need a break we need a break from that baby thank you yeah so then they took the like lead baboon the the their their leader alpha the alpha. The alpha bat. And the baboons went like fucking crazy. And so they attack the car for real and the lead actress's terror as they're attacking the car is

also real. Oh, they're actors in the car while the baboons are attacking. And presumably also there's an alpha male baboon inside the car with that. That's the part that I don't understand. This actress is surrounded by baboons. There's a zookeeper holding on to an alpha male baboon in the back.

And baboons are huge and scary. Does it have a seatbelt on? Is it restrained? How big is this car? It's not that big. Have they removed the baby by then? Is there a baby in there too? A baby and an alpha baboon.

Oh, I don't know. But Damien's in there. the little boy, Harvey Stevens, a five-year-old. Oh, my God. A baboon could, like, tear you apart. Absolutely. They're big and powerful and have scary little butts. Scary little butts. They got human hands with, like, 20 times our strength. They could rip you to fucking shreds.

We don't talk enough about how scary giant apes are. They are. They are scary. They're scary. Seems like everyone ended up okay in the end. But man, movies in the 70s, actors rights violations left and right. Yikes. And then you guys are gonna love this there's this this film fell victim to a sinister curse oh i love it when this happens and the this

is genuinely the craziest shit i've heard and and it's not like all verified so there's theories that like some of this was made up to kind of add to the lore of the movie and draw people in but some of it is verified and it's I don't know what's what but so here we go I'm going to tell you all the crazy shit that has been said about it

star Gregory Peck and David Seltzer took separate planes to the UK, yet both planes were struck by lightning. What? It like took down one of the engines of I think the plane that David

Seltzer was in. I think that one is real. While producer Harvey Bernard was in Rome, lightning just missed him. It says Rottweilers hired for the film attacked their trainers. A hotel at which director Richard Donner was staying got bombed by the IRA. Oh, my. He was also struck by a car.

Oh, my God. After Peck canceled another flight to Israel, the plane he would have chartered crashed, killing everybody on board. Whoa. On day one of the shoot, several principal members of the crew survived a head-on car crash. Oh, my God. The jinx appeared to persist well into post-production when special effects artist John Richardson was injured

and his girlfriend beheaded in an accident on the set of A Bridge Too Far. What? Isn't that crazy? Beheaded? I wonder how she was beheaded. Don't tell me! I guess, sorry, Emily doesn't want to know.

Oh, no! My question is in the first one, when lightning hits your plane and it takes out an engine, the airplane can still land? That's fine? I guess. That's all works? Because that's wild. That must be so scary. I think it would be a really scary landing. Yeah. That's very scary. It made me want to do. I know we've talked about this before, but maybe in a future bonus episode, we can watch that documentary. That's called I think it's called Cursed Films. And it's just about all this type of shit.

I want to know. I want to. Yeah, I would love to know. I know The Exorcist has this kind of stuff. And spooky shit happens on spooky sets. Shit on spooky sets. Weooky shit on spooky sets. We got baboons going crazy. The Rottweiler one, I'm like,

I don't trust these people's treatment of animals, so that one feels like not a curse so much as what are y'all doing with animals? Part of the other, there was another trivia that there's a part where a goldfish bowl gets knocked over, and it said that the director refused to hurt goldfish so they had to paint sardines orange and so it seems that he he was very concerned about animals and then yet

all these there's a lot of animals in this movie. I feel like he's less concerned about the people. He won't hurt a goldfish, but let the baboons loose on the actors, you know? Painting sardines. The painting of sardines? That doesn't make any sense. I looked closely, and I could tell that they are sardines. Really?

That's funny. Looked closely. I looked closely and I could tell that they are Serpents. Really? That's funny. I looked closely. Oh, man. Okay. All right. That's all I got. Weird. Weird.

So let's get into it. Let's get into it. To hear the rest of this episode, head on over to patreon.com slash tstwpodcast and join us in Tony fucking Colette's inner circle. Otherwise, we will see you here on Wednesday with your regularly scheduled programming, and next week's episode will be Green Room. See you then. Bye.