The curse of the Omen

Many people said the devil wouldn't allow such a film to be made, the number of mysterious events surrounding the original filming of the Omen has plagued cast members since:

In June 1975, just two months before filming was due to begin, Gregory Peck’s son had killed himself with a bullet to the head. The actor set off for London in September in a sombre mood which wasn’t much soothed when his plane was hit by lightning high above the Atlantic. A few weeks later, executive producer Mace Neufeld also left Los Angeles. You think lightning doesn’t strike twice? It does in this story. “It was the roughest five minutes I’ve ever had on an airliner,” says Neufeld. The curse of The Omen had begun.

There was much more to come. The hotel in which Neufeld and his wife were staying was bombed by the IRA. So, too, was a restaurant where the executives and actors, including Peck, were expected for dinner on November 12.

A plane they had been due to hire for aerial filming was switched to another client at the last minute and crashed on take-off, killing all on board.

A tiger handler helped in the filming of the Omen, informing cast and crew of the correct procedures when handling animals. Two weeks after filming the handler was pulled into the lions enclosure by his head and eaten alive.

Even when filming finished, the curse seemed to follow the actors and technicians to different projects. Richardson we know about, but the story of stuntman Alf Joint is almost as chilling. He too went to work on A Bridge Too Far, but was badly injured and hospitalised when a stunt went wrong. He only had to jump from a roof on to an airbag, an average day’s work for someone like him. But this time, something odd happened. He appeared to fall suddenly and awkwardly. When he woke up in hospital, he told friends he felt like he had been pushed.

Still an unbeliever??

Last of all the strangest 'accident' yet..

A man and a woman speed towards a head-on collision which will kill one of them and burn an unforgettable image into the mind of the other.
It sounds like the pitch for a movie but, while film is at the heart of it, this story is very real indeed. The place is Holland, the year 1976, the date August 13 – a Friday, as bad luck would have it. The man is designer John Richardson, currently working on Richard Attenborough’s second world war epic, A Bridge Too Far, but most recently employed as special effects consultant on supernatural chiller The Omen. The woman is Liz Moore, his assistant. In a few moments she’ll be dead, cut in half when the car’s front wheel slices through the chassis and into the passenger seat. Richardson will survive to tell the tale – and quite a story it is too.

Less than a year earlier, he had masterminded the parade of gruesome deaths which had made The Omen a box office smash, among them the decapitation of a photographer played by David Warner. And, like everyone else who had worked on the film – including stars Gregory Peck and Lee Remick – he was well aware of the whispers and rumours which had surrounded its filming. There had been talk of a hex, a curse, a hoodoo.

Did he believe it? Not then, perhaps. But as he came to in the minutes after the crash, he saw something that must have chilled him to the bone: his passenger, dead from injuries which bore an uncanny resemblance to the ones he had prepared for Warner. And a road sign marking the distance to an otherwise insignificant Dutch town. It read: Ommen, 66.6 km.

Curse or coincidence????

Story courtesey of

The Sunday Herald

first they should never have remade omen, class horror. like the geezer said in the doc, the best horror movies are the ones that may come to be true.

the spirit world runs this world, and of course there are two sides to it. hollywood is obsessed with the occult and there movies project it all the time. what goes on behind the scenes of music and film industry would probably shock people.

with regard to the film and all the stuff surrounding it, whether the incidents in this film out weigh all the incidents that come with making all movies we do not know. just because it is the omen, we all like to read extra into it. although i am not saying that the things may of happened because of the film, i am sure the producers like the fact that dodgy stuff happened around the film.

nice film that touches us all inside, and that is of course is what should be a good film is all about.

[edit on 7-6-2006 by andy1033]

Interesting set of co-incidences, or maybe a self fulfilling prophecy?
"Curses" seem to be common place in many "occult" films. (Rosemarys' Baby, and Poltergeist spring to mind)

One thing that caught my attention :

And a road sign marking the distance to an otherwise insignificant Dutch town. It read: Ommen, 66.6 km.

Dutch road signs do not normally show fractions of kilometers, only the smaller bicycle path signs do.
Does anyone know where the crash took place? Then we can work out the distance to Ommen.

_Melem

This reminds me of Is there a 'Superman' curse?

What is the curse? While everyone knows the misfortune that came to paralyze Christopher Reeve, the nervous breakdown suffered by Margot Kidder and the multiple sclerosis that struck Richard Pryor; many others connected to "Superman" have suffered...continues

Maybe some things are cursed.

sanc

Another interesting fact overlooked by the website is the new anti-christ bears the mark 666. 666 representing 'www' in ancient Hebrew.. Perhaps the new anti-christ is the thing you are on right now....

Originally posted by Knights
Another interesting fact overlooked by the website is the new anti-christ bears the mark 666. 666 representing 'www' in ancient Hebrew.. Perhaps the new anti-christ is the thing you are on right now....

people also speculate that it may mean the human collective, that we are all part of. no one outside the people running this world would seem to know. but one thing i know is that they are looking for someone, they do expect someone to come. i am not the only one to say this, people that have come out of secret groups say to they are looking for someone to come along.

who ever they are looking for, is in the deep doo doo.

mod edit: censor circumvention

[edit on 7-6-2006 by sanctum]

Originally posted by melem
Interesting set of co-incidences, or maybe a self fulfilling prophecy?
"Curses" seem to be common place in many "occult" films. (Rosemarys' Baby, and Poltergeist spring to mind)

One thing that caught my attention :

And a road sign marking the distance to an otherwise insignificant Dutch town. It read: Ommen, 66.6 km.

Dutch road signs do not normally show fractions of kilometers, only the smaller bicycle path signs do.
Does anyone know where the crash took place? Then we can work out the distance to Ommen.

_Melem

Interesting.. I did abit of research and many roadsigns did show only kilometers.. Afew however also showed fractions of kilometers.. As follows:

I thought I heard the same thing about The Exorcist. A lot of people killing themselves and weird stuff going on at the set. Sort of like how the guy in Passion of The Christ got struck by lightning on the cross .

Interesting.. I did abit of research and many roadsigns did show only kilometers.. Afew however also showed fractions of kilometers.. As follows:

Yes, the smaller signs do, but as you can see there are no place/city names on them, so its unlikely he saw Ommen 66.6 km.
Those signs in your image are usually countdowns to Highway exits etc.

Got my curiosity going now Will see if I can find any official records of the crash.

Just found this:
The Curse Of the Omen Documentary 2005

_Melem


[edit on 8-6-2006 by melem]

Perhaps the story was over exaggerated around the sign incident.. But then again I can't see the purpose of such a lie, the very man in the crash saw his wife cut to pieces, I can't see how he would sensationalise for the sake of it, what could he gain from the incident? It sounds wrong to say but what about film VHS sales? I mean the film was released a year before so cinema film publicity would be out of the question.

I too am interested.. will research further into the subject.

Does anyone know what date in september 195 did the lightning strike the two planes 8 hours apart? Any more 8s that can come out of this? Like a room number 8?

Notice the moving 75 on "the box"

a reply to: melem

i found a picture i.ytimg.com... but it says 600 meter to ommen