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The joke is derived from Rosemary's Baby, the glossy spectacle of Armageddon. Satan needs connections like everybody else, the chosen patsy is the American ambassador (Gregory Peck) conveniently presented with a replacement just as his wife (Lee Remick) delivers a stillborn scion. Damien the malevolent little cherub (Harvey Spencer Stephens), who spooks every critter except for infernal hounds and whose lavish birthday party isn't complete until the nanny dangles from the roof of the mansion. Rise of the Antichrist, an immemorial prophecy adjusted to the world of Seventies politics, "quite a stretch" and yet there's the grinning hellion ready for the "counterfeit kingdom" of the White House. "What could possibly be wrong with our child? We're the beautiful people, aren't we?" Richard Donner stages the shocks with grim efficiency—a placid park deformed by wind and lightning for the skewered padre (Patrick Troughton), the ancient hamlet with slanting streets for the decapitated shutterbug (David Warner). (The Etruscan graveyard is a bonus from Bava.) Tour of the Old World, London and Rome and Jerusalem, with Latin choruses by Jerry Goldsmith. "He who will not be saved by the Lamb will be torn by the beast!" Beneath the glum surface is the W.C. Fields tale of a paterfamilias' distaste for tykes and dogs, enhanced by Billie Whitelaw's rich Mary Poppins lampoon as the governess doting on the tricycle-riding spawn. Born on the sixth of June at six in the morning, the mark of the Devil is in the last place you look, isn't it always? Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train for the Rottweiler atop the darkened staircase, a slow-mo bullet to halt Peck's metamorphosis from Atticus Finch into Captain Ahab. Cohen divides the theme strikingly with It's Alive and God Told Me To. With Martin Benson, Holly Palance, Robert Rietti, Tommy Duggan, John Stride, and Leo McKern.
--- Fernando F. Croce |