‘The First Omen’ Delivers a Female Antichrist [The Lady Killers Podcast]

“How do you control people who no longer believe? You create something to fear.”

Horror in the 1970s was dominated by the catholic church. With the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), audiences hungered for films centered on demonic possession and satanic corruption. Richard Donner’s 1976 film The Omen followed suit with a young Antichrist named Damien (Harvey Stephens) strategically placed in the home of a powerful politician. The story begins with a cursed birth and fraudulent adoption then skips ahead several years to catch up with a strangely sinister little boy.

But lurking within is another story of unthinkable evil. Arkasha Stevenson winds back the clock with The First Omen, a pregnancy horror film centered on Damien’s unwitting mother. Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) is an idealistic young nun who arrives in Rome only to find she’s the target of a sinister cult hiding in her new convent. 

In the latest episode of Bloody FM’s The Lady Killers Podcast, co-hosts Jenn Adams, Sammie Kuykendall, Rocco Thompson, and Mae Shults explore the origin story of one of horror’s most unlikely villains and a prequel with a surprisingly strong point of view. How does the film tie into Donner’s 1976 classic? Does the story need its blunt final scene? How did Stevenson get away with such graphic depictions of monstrous birth and what’s going on with this hypocritical cult? They’ll talk pregnancy, religion, philosophy, and feminism as it exists within this prescient story.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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