Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas – A Defense (Sort of)

This is a piece I never imagined I'd write. At least, not this way. I've had a desire to write something for this movie since it first came out, but never really got to it. I had held back, reluctant to just bag on this movie for the sake of bagging on it – fun as that may be.

Then this holiday season rolled around and I started compiling a list of seasonal movies leading this to creep back into my brain, and I found myself looking at it from a different direction that hadn’t occurred to me before.

So...here we go.

At the risk of starting in a roundabout way, I don't think I've ever said this before here, but I could never really get into the Sharknado films. I bring this up for one reason, and I swear I’m going somewhere with this – sincerity.

The thing that genuinely takes a bad film and makes it entertaining for me is when it is so genuinely unaware of how bad it is, and is therefore free to just completely go wild.

It's with this in mind that I say – I come not to bury Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, but to praise it. Perhaps not the praise he would desire, but certainly the praise it has earned.

Buckle up, kids. We're goin' for a ride!

The OctOmen - Not With a Bang, But With Two Paperbacks

I don’t care how weird it sounds to say, this is the entry I was looking forward to all month.

Not because it’s the end of the month – though this has got me itching to get back to working on this site with more regularity – but because I was looking forward to finally checking these books out first hand.

For a long time, these sequels were something I had only known about in passing. In fact, for the better part of several years, there was only one thing I knew for certain about them – when faced with the question of ‘What do we do now that Damien’s dead?’, Gordon McGill’s solution was, and I say this with only the slightest shred of irony, to pull his answer out of someone’s ass.

No. Really. If you’ve heard of these books before this, chances are, it’s largely thanks to the genuinely bizarre origin story they give to their newest antagonist, Damien’s offspring known in the fourth book only as The Abomination before taking on his father’s namesake in the final installment.

For anyone who hasn’t heard this and is wondering what the Hell I’m getting at…well, let’s just rip the band-aid off: as the book sequels present matters, the scene in The Final Conflict between Damien and Kate Reynolds – I’m reluctant to call it a love scene because there is a VERY rapey vibe during it – was carried out through anal sex that then led to Kate giving birth to the Abomination via--I know, I know. Human anatomy doesn’t work that way. At all. It’s part of why these books have been on my ‘Now this I’ve gotta see’ radar.

It's not the sole reason to read this, but it DOES make for a memorable hook to get started on.

As I worked my way through the first three books getting to these, with their own weird elements worked in, I was genuinely starting to look more forward to them than I was the movies. And having completed the five-book cycle – it’s one of the high points of this month’s run.

Let’s be clear – the crazy is there. Quite a few other examples of it too, things like a priest being buried alive by dogs, The Abomination praying to Damien’s embalmed corpse, and the fourth book’s finale, which combines nuclear war with an act of betrayal that’s one part The Passion of the Christ and one-part Weekend at Bernie’s.

Amid all the craziness, the story McGill puts together, to my pleasant surprise, works as a next step for the series, both in terms of sticking to Bernhard’s ‘let the Bible be a road map’ method, as well as just presenting (relatively) logical growth of established plotlines to this point.

It also helps that McGill avoids the mistake The Awakening made – he realizes you can’t just redo the first movie. Instead, we follow the Abomination as a teenager coming into his own with his identity already all sorted out to his followers. We still have outsiders trying to piece things together, but the book also presents much of it in a way that says to the readers ‘yeah, you’ve been on this ride for the past three novels; you already know the score.’

To that end, The Abomination isn’t just a younger Damien – though he shares his father’s looks and abilities, and later his name, it’s established early on that he doesn’t share his father’s goals. Where Damien seeks to rule, using chaos to unite all of humanity under his rule, the Abomination wants destruction, seeking to use his father’s instruments of chaos to plunge humanity into one final, fatal war.

If I’m being perfectly honest, a lot of the positive points I’ve mentioned are more confined to Armageddon 2000, the fourth book in the series. This isn’t to say that the last novel, The Abomination is bad, but it is the weaker of the two. For lack of a better term for it, the problem with The Abomination as a book is, after the ambitious effort to continue the series in Armageddon 2000, The Abomination feels more like a victory lap. It has some memorable pieces to it, including two memorable crucifix-related deaths, but much of the story feels like it’s repeating the beats of the fourth book to diminished returns.

Even the finale, save for an eleventh hour return by a character that lands on the wilder side of these books’ plot points, mostly feels like a more drawn out version of the previous finale, with the betrayal lacking the same interesting rationale behind it that the prior entry offered.

It’s still not a bad read on its own, particularly if you wish to complete the series and see all the plot points wrapped up, but it feels like a step down after the weird, yet entertaining, outing that Armageddon 2000 brings to the table.

It’s a shame these weren’t the stories that got tapped to continue the brand on screen. That first reveal would be a tricky one to pull off – it’s worth noting McGill goes for a book and a half of couching the origins in vague references before finally just putting out on the table in The Abomination, albeit in tasteful wording – but in the right hands, it could have been presented in a way that still fit the feel of the earlier movies.

Or even if they just leaned in to the oddity and stepped on the gas, it would have at least been more entertaining from a sheer ‘we’re actually going there’ perspective than the lackluster reheat we did get.

But that’s, if you’ll excuse the term considering how I started this, hindsight for you.

If you feel curious about these books, either for the closure, the alternate ending compared to that fourth movie, or just for the odd elements like butt birth and corpse hauling, I’d say they’re worth trying to track down. They’re quick reads, and even if your library doesn’t have them (check them first), they’re easy to find cheap on the second-hand market.

Don't feel too discouraged if your library doesn't have much luck with these. I'm not entirely clear if The Abomination got an American release or not. But, again, you can find the British versions cheap enough. And by cheap enough, I mean shipping will likely cost more than the book itself.

And with that, I can now bring this month to a close. This was an interesting ride. A change from Phantasm last year, but not necessarily a bad one, even with my grievances along the way.

As I said before, I’m finally getting back into a feel for this again. So look here soon, there is more coming. Some horror, some otherwise.

Feels good to be back, and a Happy Halloween to you all.

Till next time.

The OctOmen - Take 2: The Omen: 666 (2006)

This IS rare – a double header!

In my defense, both of these were…they were something else, and while I could have just took things past deadline, I really want to close this month proper with the books. I meant what I said, I’m having more fun with those than I expected.

But that is for Halloween proper.

For now, I want you to travel back in time with me once again. The year is 2006, and Hollywood is still madly in the throes of its love affair with horror remakes. With degrees of success coming from rebooting The Ring, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and The Hills Have Eyes, just about every horror property was getting sized up for a modernization for one reason for another.

The OctOmen - The Made-for-TV Edition - Omen IV: The Awakening

Death is but a door, time a window, and horror franchises have never stopped because their villain was killed off before, so once again, we return to the Damien-less world of The Omen.

This has been an interesting month for me. I stand by my opinion that Damien: Omen II and The Final Conflict are both movies that could have been more than they were, but it was still interesting to find the good elements in them along with the shortcomings.

Watching this movie in light of that, I have to wonder if I have a monkey’s paw on me somewhere, because this sequel feels like it decided to address the horror shortage in the worst way possible.

The OctOmen- The Final Conflict (But..Not Really)

Welcome back to the Third Row for this, our continuing installments in tracking the weird, wild path of the cinematic Antichrist that is The OctOmen.

We last left things in the wake of teenage Damien coming into his own at the end of the second movie, with all obstacles out of his way and the most powerful company in the world now in his hands. Things onscreen are looking pretty good for the old son of a jackal. Offscreen, it was a bit of a different story - the sequel opened to mixed reviews, and while it made its budget back, the box office compared to its predecessor was a sizable step down - less than half what the previous made.

Flash forward three more years as Harvey Bernhard brings the story of Damien Thorn to a close with The Final Conflict. It's worth noting upfront that this was the official title it was marketed under. While the taglines made it clearer it was part of the Omen series, it wasn't originally labeled as such, to the point where even the movie itself still bears that original, implicit standalone title.

Told ya...

The OctOmen: The Junior High Years - Damien: Omen II

Because it's not a franchise without the sequels...

 Last time we left off was with the success of The Omen in 1976. As one of the top ten grossing movies of its year and with it ending with Damien still loose in the world, it was a pretty safe bet that 20th Century Fox was going to try and get a sequel off the ground.

Flash forward to 1978: despite Richard Donner and David Seltzer both bowing out, the second movie pushed forward under the momentum of the previous movie's producer, Harvey Bernhard – jumping ahead seven years to see a teenage Damien coming into his own at military school.

It's the charming story of Damien coming of age on vacation at a seaside villa--
Nah, this is just for the intro.
Would be an interesting way to play a horror movie though.

The Birth of The OctOmen – The Omen (1976)

 Hello and welcome back to the Third Row for this, the first entry in this October's franchise run, tentatively titled The OctOmen.

Naturally, we're kicking things off with the one that started it all – Richard Donner's 1976 classic, The Omen.

Good morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world.

Leave it to October to get me back in the saddle.

Again, it's been a quiet year here getting to this point. In my defense, it's been a busy one. New job, new hours, new curves thrown as a result of said job.

Now that we're coming up on a year, I'm finally getting back in a groove where it's time to dust this sucker off again.

Well, that and Halloween motivates me like few other things, so there's that as well.

I'm still at peace with the fact that my schedule means putting to rest the '31 movies' plan I used to do, but in turn, I did enjoy last year's franchise deep dive on Phantasm, so I decided this would be a good way to continue for October this year. Like last time, I picked from a few franchises I felt had both a manageable workload as well as good material to dig into.

The votes came in and this year I'm going all in on one of the heavy hitters of evil horror children – The Omen.

I'd be lying if I said up front I wasn't a little struck by how apropos this feels as a choice despite being selected by vote. That this year's series is, at its core, about a white guy born into affluence who effortlessly climbs the ladder of power as other forces are constantly moving to eliminate all those who would stop him or learn too much about him just...

Sorry, had to get that out of my system now or it was gonna back up on me later. It's been a year.

Anyway, the first entry will be going up later this week with Richard Donner's 1976 classic. Given the number of titles covered this month, there aren't really hard set days as we're going over the count to make it a single day of the week cycle, but will actively keep things moving.

Because I also am adding a bonus at the end of this month – because I was already morbidly curious to begin with, and because I could find them all dirt cheap, I'm sweetening the pot on this particular franchise run. Alongside doing the original four movies and the 2006 remake, I will close out the month with a look at the Omen novel series – in particular the final two book only sequels that were never tapped for movies, which are...well... I'd say to Google Armageddon 2000 for a taste of what's coming, but part of me wants to surprise you all. Let's just say it's...it's something else.

I do it because I love you.
...actually, it's because I'm kind of really looking forward to seeing how completely batshit these last books get. Even the early ones take the stories shown in the movies and give 'em a shiny coat of weirdness.

So, with the formalities now out of the way, the first movie will be going up later this week.

Look at me readers, it's all for you!