Posted Aug 18, 08 09:25 AM
Parental Discretion Advised
Man, do I live for that phrase. The horror equivalent of that amusement park yeah-yeah-whatever warning about riders with weaker hearts, jittery spines, and pregnant moms. (You'd think screams of the riders doing the corkscrew plunge pushing 65 mph or the shaking tinker toy support beams would merit a sufficient nudge.)
Three words to wake up the butterflies faster than runners-up "The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Innocent," "Based on a True Story," and -- one of which I'm especially partial to -- "Edited for Content." Gotta have "Edited for Content."
But "Parental Discretion Advised" -- yeah, that's the high-bar. The adrenaline of any slumber party screening. It's what resurrects that pesky childhood conscience, the inner killjoy nagging you not to climb one branch higher, not to ride the old Schwinn bike beyond the third neighbor's house. And far worse. Not to watch Chiller’s premiere of The Omen (1976) this Sunday night.
Three words. Like bait in the water. You sense you shouldn't do something but you're absolutely, undeniably going to. Moreso, you need to. Have to. Want to. Will. Innocence be damned. Put a hand to young viewers' eyes all we want to -- and we should. We must. (For one, my nephews are not old enough to read my graphic novels -- Final Destination and Se7en -- but of course they know of them.) We can diligently try to maintain that innocence for as long as possible, but when kids start pushing your hand away, it's just time. Time to let go, but not time to walk away from the responsibility of question and answers. Because human nature is one monstrous game of Truth-Dare-Double-Dare-Promise-or-Repeat. And no slumber party goes on without a chaperone. Or spook stories after the parents have turned in.
So a slumber party horror staple like The Omen's going to get defanged of its precious venom by most other networks’ censors. Not at Chiller. Although rough language and inordinate skin are downplayed, your Fangoria euphorias drip on, in and through. Of course, some moviemakers – more so than others -- prepare for Jack Valenti’s editing scissors. (A worse-case scenario? Halloween II on AMC. With the violent denouements inherent to narrative sense, excised footage leads to whole passages scrambled, even half an hour or more out of place. Oy...) A savvy director like Richard Donner implemented various angles for various versions. It also helped immensely that the entire trilogy -- yes, I'm pretending that Omen IV: The Awakening (1991) never, ever existed -- didn't associate creepy, nasty invention with gratuitous gore.
David Warner's plane of glass decapitation may rank as your most infamous moment in the movie. But to set the tone, and do so early, I still get rattled by the first offing: the priest's impalement via lightning rod. It's not just the how or why.
It's the where (he couldn't get into a locked church).
It's the when (a sudden windstorm later changes back to sunshine).
It's the who (being raised Catholic, it always bothered me that religious deaths were 100% Catholic: priests, nuns, monks -- even bishops. Can you imagine the uproar if a Baptist preacher was knocked off, or an Assemblies of God minister got the axe?).
Anyhoo. Even in a TV-14 rated premiere, that first offing in The Omen doesn't leave me. And I do glance up at the steeples of older cathedrals from time to time. :)
Parental discretion advised, indeed.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 09:25 AM