Original subtitles

My name is Mace Neufeld.

I'm a feature and television producer, and I was the executive producer of The

Omen.

Omen came about because a friend of mine, Harvey Bernhardt, came to me with

idea of doing a story about the devil child.

The curse attached to The Omen is an interesting one because it kind of

seemed self -inflicted in a way. They had a...

A religious advisor named Robert Munger on set, who I think before mostly

anything had begun, had said, if you're going to be dealing with the subject

matter of the devil, you're inviting the devil into this, and bad things are

going to happen.

There are some people that say the omen was cursed because of the subject matter

of a child as the Antichrist.

Robert Munger, the minister who came up with the idea, thought Satan's greatest

trick. is to remain invisible.

The film was trying to make them visible.

And so that's why Satan was trying to stop the film from being made.

In the very beginning, when we were first setting up the process of shooting

film in England,

Munger told us we were treading on very thin ice, that the

Antichrist would do everything not to have this picture made.

For me, that was in one ear and out the other.

In the beginning, Gregory Peck was coming to England, and his plane was

by lightning.

That was scary.

Then David Seltzer was coming over, the writer, just a few days later, and his

plane was struck by lightning.

Two planes carrying two crew members, both being hit by lightning on the way

set.

Pretty spooky. Also, Gregory Peck was supposed to be on a flight that he

canceled. And then the plane apparently crashed and killed everyone on board.

The plane took off, hit a flock of birds, crashed at the

end of the runway into a road, and hit a station wagon.

And in the station wagon was the wife and the two children of the pilot of

plane. They had dropped him off.

There are a lot of strange things happening that you could call cursed.

The IRA at that time was, in 1975, was very active in London.

We're staying at a hotel on Piccadilly opposite Green Park.

My wife and I were walking out of the hotel when suddenly there was a massive

boom that set off a bomb.

A block and a half away, we were booked to go into Scott's

restaurant, and they blew up the restaurant.

As these things began to happen, we all became very wary.

Welcome to Windsor Safari Park. We shot in a place called Windsor Safari Park,

and there was a sequence with baboons.

Keep all car windows closed.

Suddenly the car that B. Remick was driving stalled.

She couldn't get out.

And B. Remick is trapped in a car, being attacked by baboons.

Lee was really terrified.

And it shows in that scene.

We shot this at an animal park.

One of the handlers at the park was killed.

The animal handler on the show was eaten by a lion,

allegedly. Lions or a lion ate the zookeeper. Not during the filming,

but close to the filming. When we left and he was securing the place, he left

his cabin door open or something and the lions attacked and killed him.

Another report says it wasn't a lion, it was a tiger.

After the making of the film, our special effects supervisor, John

had an automobile accident.

And his fiancée was decapitated.

The accident replicated a decapitation in the movie.

People said it happened.

Near a sign that said Omen. Omen.

O -M -M -E -N, 66 .6 kilometers.

But these things that happened around the making of the film seem to be

more than coincidental.

That's the best way I can put it.

With movies that deal with demonic archetypes, there's definitely the

for all types of phenomenon.

The production for these movies, they start to make what you would call a

substantial contact with these forces.

They start to distill them into the atmosphere of the production.

Also into the individuals that are involved in the production.

Those sensitive to these forces notice the little glitches in the matrix

of things like consecutive plane flights, getting struck with lightning.

Absolutely.

film The Omen was no doubt an active gateway in its own right.

Hi, I'm Michael Carell. I'm known on the internet as Uncle Birch.

I'm a witch.

Some people think that if you just don't believe in this kind of stuff, you

can't be harmed by it. We call those targets.

That person...

won't be protecting themselves they won't have any spiritual protection and

everything goes wrong in their life they won't try and fix it and then it's like

it's like a virus like a festering virus it gets worse and worse and worse with

time i went and saw it follows and then you know the story is this

sort of unknown evil follows you after you've had sex

You can get rid of it, okay?

Just sleep with someone as soon as you can.

Just pass it along.

I mean, it's really easy to read that as sort of a really shallow kind of a

metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases.

But on the other hand, why get rid of the idea of...

evil as an infection vector.

Because the idea of supernatural infection is really common. This idea

can have evil passed on to us and we can somehow be tainted with it.

To

talk

about curses, you have to define what is a curse.

Some of the earliest curses are found in Egyptian execration texts or in

Mesopotamian rituals or in biblical texts.

Curses often come as part of what's called a covenant. A covenant is sort of

like a contract between a superior party and an inferior party.

And there are curses in these contracts.

What's going to happen to you if you don't do it?

If you look in the Bible, it can be animals that are cursed, it could be

that are cursed, it could be places that are cursed.

Cursing was quite widespread in antiquity. We have lots of examples and

phenomena about cursing. One of these phenomena is narrative. So these are

stories of figures like Jesus or prophets or other holy men cursing

else, striking them dead, striking them blind.

We also have tomb curses or grave curses.

Death, eternal punishment for...

Anyone who opens this casket, good heavens,

what a terrible curse.

In ancient texts, curses were pronounced. So it was premised on the

words had creative power.

Pronouncing the curse will have an effect in the real world. Just by

something, you could make something happen.

The occult colors mainstream life in ways that we rarely suspect.

Lots of people in public life, probably in the same measure as those in private

life, are interested in divination, tarot, dream interpretation.

You've come to have our fortunes told.

Can you really read the future?

I will not disappoint you, my lady.

There are people today in different parts of the United States and other

of the world who will still pay somebody.

to curse a troublesome neighbor or to curse a love partner who jilted them.

In this day and age, witchcraft's huge.

Folk magic's huge.

We got hoodoo, we got voodoo, we got conjurer. There's all kinds of different

magics out there.

I've been a witch my whole life.

I talked to... Spirit, just like I talked to you sitting here, it's just

to me.

And some people out there are just, I will even say, are just so out there.

I can't believe it.

If I was to put profession in the lower third descriptor, what would that say?

Black magician.

Absolutely black magician.

You know, it's not filmmaking that I do. It's not necessarily just vlogging.

It's doing black magic.

Performing as crazy and out there rituals as I can. Just kind of pushing

envelope further and further and further.

For myself and documenting that through video.

Three, two, one, go.

Hey guys, it's E .A. Coetting.

Is it possible for a film set or a film production to be cursed?

From a black magician's standpoint, this is a tricky question because for the

most part, in order for there to be an actual curse, you have to have somebody

on the other end of it pushing that curse.

Another black magician that's trying to harm somebody through that curse.

For example, Satanists who might not like films mocking their religion.

There was some watered -down versions of Satanism. It could be that the

Satanists didn't like that portrayal.

After spending weeks searching for these people, I finally met their leader.

As he explained his beliefs and methods, I realized I was dealing with a maniac.

There was a time, especially back when those movies were coming out there, the

Satanists were concerned with some PR work.

In the making of The Omen, I got a lot of crackpot threats.

One of these terrible letters I had gotten said my blood will run on the

for doing what I did.

Since we're talking about films being cursed, we're going to do a practical

experiment and see if we can curse a film that's in production.

It's one of the most unique feelings to call on a destructive force and to...

Let it flow through you.

The feeling that I'm left with it, whether I'm trying to kill somebody

magic or I'm trying to destroy a business or whatever it is, the emotion

left with at the end of it is always humility.

I'm humbled by it.

The premise of all curses is that pronouncing the curse will have an

the real world.

So look, I invoke doom for this empire,

for this creation.

There's no one as far as I know that pronounced a curse on the omen.

So it is done.

There was a very strongly felt presence.

The mere fact that a production is looking to encapsulate

and embody the essence of many of these forces is where it begins.

Probably the most common magic in the whole world and almost every culture

practices this type of magic on Earth, and it's called sympathetic magic.

The rules of sympathetic magic are...

Like attracts like. And in Hollywood, you're going to know this by the

version of the voodoo doll.

Look, an authentic voodoo doll.

Somebody already sent for it. You get a doll and you get somebody's hair and

fingernails, maybe the picture. Put them in the doll, on the doll.

And then you do the thing that you want to have happen to the doll.

Ready for another shot, doll? And then that likeness attracts it to the other

person.

Depicting a demonic curse extremely accurately could bring the magic of like

attracts like to you.

Oh, the omens, like, you know, the Antichrist.

So if the devil exists, if the Antichrist exists, that's some pretty

energy to be depicting.

It's more likely that a film dealing with the devil could become Kurt versus

movie like City Slickers.

The nature of the film can be enough to kind of ignite its own spark.

You have many films, like you talk about City Slickers, that don't cross

the threshold of creating a substantial contact.

So long, cowboy.

Because that film is spiritually neutral.

Whore does seem to have that knack of...

crossing the threshold into darker and dangerous subject matter.

It's almost the perfect cocktail of variables that get people thinking

about supernatural ideas and possibilities.

When you watch a horror movie, you're watching it to escape.

Even though you know it's a movie, you're thinking about things that are

of conventional thinking or scientific understanding of the world.

People become more open -minded to or more interested in supernatural ideas.

And so when you watch these movies, it just kind of puts you in the right

mindset to want to see patterns or to believe in conspiracies or to believe in

curses.

With the omen, what you have is a series of coincidences or incidents that

people then weave into a narrative about a curse.

That's what coincidence theory is about.

It's just trying to get connections between what is rational and what is

weird. And, you know, on the one hand, rational can look weird, too.

Our brains are designed to believe all sorts of things.

Whether they're ghosts, poltergeists, angels and demons and gods and aliens

conspiracies, we have all this propensity to just see patterns

assume everything is connected.

Okay, we're about to show you a short clip of three basketball players dressed

in black and three basketball players dressed in white. Each of them is

a basketball back and forth between themselves.

Your task is to count the number of passes.

between just the three white -shirted players.

All right? You ready?

Go.

How many of you saw the gorilla?

What? What gorilla?

Here it is again. I'll rewind it. Oh, come on, that's a different tape,

Sherbert. No, it's the same one.

So the famous gorilla experiment, this was done by Christopher Chabris and his

team, in which they were testing to what extent people do not see things in

their environment.

You know, it's like, how could you miss a gorilla?

Well, 50 % of subjects don't see the gorilla.

And the reason is because they're attending to counting the number of

And by being focused on one thing, you might miss something that's completely

obvious right there in front of you, half.

This is interesting cognitively because it shows how much we miss that's right

there in front of us.

Not only do we see things that are not real, we miss things that are real.

Now, we're talking about cursed horror films.

I'd like you to think about putting those.

films that are cursed in a box.

And we're going to put this box right here and then we're going to draw a

around it in which we have three other boxes.

So in this box, number one, we have cursed horror films, Poltergeist and The

Crow and The Exorcist and so on.

Now what I want you to think about is the second box over here, which are

non -horror films.

Superman, you know, I mean, Christopher Reeve fell off a horse, broke his neck

and... Apocalypse Now, you know, Martin Sheen has a heart attack and all these

weird things that happen.

Okay, why aren't we talking about that cell?

Because they're not horror films.

In this box down here, I want you to think about non -cursed horror films,

The Shining.

Come and play with us, Daddy.

This is one of the scariest films ever made.

No curses.

Or, more recently, It.

or Get Out, why don't we notice those?

And then the fourth category, of course, is non -curse, non -horror films, pick

any of them.

Citizen Kane,

Casablanca, you know, people had long careers after that.

Nothing weird happened. So you have to keep in mind all four categories and

remind yourself, look, I'm only focusing on this one, but all the other ones,

put it into context, and when you see the bigger picture, you realize, okay,

there's actually nothing to be explained.

Seeing patterns in the world, that's how we form meaning, that's how we learn to

exist.

And that can extend to seeing patterns where there aren't patterns.

Maybe it's a significant coincidence, maybe it was a message sent to me from

somewhere.

There's a case of Mark Chapman, the guy who killed John Lennon.

So he was outside John Lennon's apartment in New York City, wondering if

should actually go through with it.

Just at that moment, Mia Farrow walked by, and she starred in Rosemary's Baby.

And then he recognized that the building, it's called the Dakota, it was

the filming of Rosemary's Baby, which was directed by Roman Polanski, whose

wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson family.

And they were a fan of the Beatles song, Helter Skelter.

And of course, John Lennon is in the Beatles.

And he took this as a sign that he should go through with it and kill John

Lennon.

Horror films tend to, in a bizarre way, mirror real life.

What are they doing? Why do they come here?

Some kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do.

The mirror of real life is that we are frightened of things that could go wrong

in the world.

It's the same reason we love coincidence stories.

We love coincidence stories because it gives us a feeling that the world is

smaller than it is.

Yeah, see, that's kind of a problem for us, which is we just don't believe in

coincidence. There's action and there's reaction.

There's something happened that caused that to happen, and some things are

and hard to explain.

There's a saying that the greatest trick the devil ever played was to get people

to not believe that he exists.

And I have a hard time with that one as well because it's to the devil's

advantage to be known.

Whether we're talking about angels or demons or gods, the one thing that they

want is attention.

It's exciting to me actually to think that the devil is a film fan.

I don't want to, like, put my head into the logic of a devil, but just squeeze

the heart if you want to kill him. I don't know, maybe the devil is a real

artist and likes the poetry of some of these things. But even then, if the

was an artist, and I'm not saying he isn't, I think he would go to, or she

go to great pains to really drive it home. Like, be killed by a kid.

If you really want to do a curse on the omen, you dress a kid in a little Angus

Young prep boy uniform and have that kid show up at the door, ring the bell, and

then just look at you funny, and then your head explodes.

Oh, the devil's here.

If Satan wants to stop a project, if he wants to bring a plane down, he's going

to bring a plane down.

Actually, it seems like Satan is helping the film.

And every time there's a big mishap, the IRA explosions, for example, it was the

crew that was saved and other people that died. So how is it that Satan is

trying to stop the film and he keeps killing other people?

To me, this is the opposite of a curse. This is a blessing.

If it was cursed, wouldn't Gregory packed in on that flight?

But maybe we're looking at this all wrong.

Maybe... These films aren't cursed by the devil.

Maybe these films have been blessed by the devil.

Perhaps the devil has been at work all along.

When demons work in this world, they like to sign their signature, their

autograph, on everything that they touch, so that those of us who are

attention can look and can see the very clear signature of the powers of magic

and the powers of darkness in the world around us.

Do you think that it was a cursed film production?

No, actually...

Actually, I think it was a blessed film production, certainly as far as I was

concerned. No, I think it's just the opposite. I think it was a very blessed

film.

In the end, it all worked out. We were a big hit, and everybody got through it.

I do think that these movies and the stories that sometimes sprout up around

them confirm people's senses, rightly or wrongly, that we don't understand

everything in life.

The Edwardian builders of the Titanic who boasted that they built an

ship didn't have it all figured out.

Victor Frankenstein didn't have it all figured out when he thought he could

unlock the key to life.

But I'm not for a moment suggesting that anybody should throw rationalism out

the window.

And it's obvious why the devil would be doing that.

This is the age of the Antichrist.

The devils have been let loose upon the world.

And they want to make sure that we know that they are among us.

It is my command that this film and

any sequel that we follow in the same name

will bear this curse.

It is my command.

It is devastated by the failure.