Damien Thorn

[laughs]

You know, my, my husband's parents for a long time, every time they went into his apartment was like, "You gotta get rid of these comics."

[laughs]

Like, "You're never gonna get a girl."

Oh, no.

No, I haven't.

Um, dumb parents that just look at a poster.

Oh, no.

And so, intrigued, and more than a little jealous of my schoolmates, I did the next best thing, which was to go out and buy the novelisation from a dubious second-hand bookstore in the local market.

And this is something that I soon repeated, with the novelisations of the sequels Damien Omen 2, released in 1978, and The Final Conflict, released in 1981.

So, while my mother might have won the battle in that instance, I like to think I won the war.

Though, to be fair, she may well have had a point, as when I finally saw it a couple of years later, when it was next screened in 1983, I was completely terrified, though the fascination very much remained.

End quote.

Donner and producer Bernhard may well have considered him perfect for the part, but as it turns out, he wasn't the first choice.

The role of Robert Thorne had already been declined by Charlton Heston and William Holden, the latter of whom would ironically go on to play the lead in Damien Omen 2 just a few years later.

As we can see in that film, Holden would probably have been a relatively good fit for the part of Robert Thorne, but I have to say that Charlton Heston would have been an absolute disaster.

President.

I've just appointed Mr. Damien Thorne as our new ambassador to the court of St. James.

Damien Thorne is 32.

Attractive, brilliant, charismatic.

To the modern world, he brings a purpose, a vision, a destiny.

By now, we've got, you know, Sam Neill's grown up, and Devil runs a giant corporation.

Shocking.

I like that they have, I don't know how old Sam is, but Damien is 32, which is, you know, of course, Jesus is killed at 33.

20th Century Fox refused to pay for Sam's airfare to audition for the role of a...

He was going to play an adult Damien Thorne in Omian

3.

Yeah, at the time.

Now, James Mason had a rich, distinctive voice that was famous for speaking, especially reciting and narrating.

So Sam Neill became New Zealand's James Mason.

Now, as we know, Sam Neill famously played the adult Antichrist, Damien Thorne, in the 1981 horror film The Final Conflict.

That's the third movie in the Omen series.

Yes.

And which is the great, I mean, look, Damien Thorne is pretty awesome, but Nikolai Carpathia, could there be a better Antichrist name? But what was funny is my kid was watching Dr.

Beast in the other room.

Dr.

Significance here.

Is that he portrays the Antichrist Damien Thorne and people have often correlated Damien Thorne, D.T., Donald Trump.

So it's kind of interesting that Trump on that day had an antichrist-like episode, which is a head wound, a miracle, the world's amazed by this survival of

what would have been a grievous head wound.

And Neil then drew on some of Mason's mannerisms His performance and his characterization.

And the movie featured Sam Neill as Damien Thorne, the devil incarnate.

Yeah.

Wonderful cast.