Damien Thorn: Cinema’s First Antichrist Compels You to Watch . . .
20 ‘Antichrist movies’ from the ’80s home video era that aren’t ‘The Omen’ . . . or ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ or ‘The Exorcist’
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
— Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects (1995)
Now, don’t get too excited, as this anniversary date means nothing to no one except (horror) movie junkies — yours truly — but June 25, 2025, marks the 49th anniversary of original, 1976 version of The Omen.
While the critical reviews were mixed for that Richard Donner-directed effort (you know Donner for 1978’s Superman), movie goers responded by bestowing the film a $60 million box office take against a $2.8 million budget, making it one of the highest-grossing films of the year.
The success spawned The Omen franchise, beginning with the two-years later Damien: Omen II (1978), followed by Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981). While overseas audiences know the film as a theatrical release, Omen IV: The Awakening (August 1991), U.S television audiences watched it (well, not many) as a telefilm on FOX-TV, a television network operated by 20th Century Fox, the studio behind the original film.
Thirty years after the 1976 original: a remake was released in 2006 and a prequel to that remake, The First Omen, was released in 2024. Tucked between those modernized reboots: a short-lived, one-season series (2016) aired on the U.S cable network, A&E.
Sure, before The Omen came on the scene in 1976 with its Antichrist shenanigans, Roman Polanksi released his gaslight-horror, Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 (a demon-retooling of his 1965 psychological horror, Repulsion, reimaged again as The Tenant in 1976) and, as with The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby spawned a titular, digital-era franchise of telefilms, streaming series, and theatrical reboots. Then there was The Exorcist: Issued in 1973, that glossy, William Friedkin-directed terror grossed seven times more in box office ($443 million against $12 million) than The Omen. Once again: more sequels and reboots about the Mesopotamian demon, Pazuzu, ensued.
Our take away: Hollywood, as well as their respective audiences, loves the Devil. Thus, the sub-genre of “religious horror,” was born.
“It’s not a rip off. It’s a homage.”
— Peter Swan on the set of Hotel Satan, from Clint Eastwood’s The Dead Pool (1988).
Since then, a lot of movies in the religious horror cycle (and sometimes “religious sci-fi,” as we’ll soon see) ripped off all three films, individually, while most were a shameless pastiche of an all three-films-in-one film. There’s been a lot of Gothic fiction written by the original greats of horror: Sheridan Le Fanu, E.T.A Hoffman, Gaston LeRoux, Guy de Mausspaunt, Thomas De Quincey, and Bram Stoker, as well as a lot of films — beginning with the black and white silent films Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror by F.W Murnau, from 1922, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s surrealistic body-horror short, Un Chien Andalou, from 1929, and 1932’s Vampyr by Carl Theodore Drayer — since the devil’s first appearance in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 where the devil is represented by a serpent that temps Adam and Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. (Yes, it is still debated if the reptile is a representation of Ol’ Scratch himself or the desires of Adam’s flesh incarnate, but let’s not go down that hellhole.)
Most recently, Al Pacino — ironically portraying Lucifer himself in The Devil’s Advocate (1997), itself pinching from the those three, evil game changers — delved into the forbidden tales of Satan once again with The Ritual: a tale about two morally-conflicted priests who perform repeated exorcisms on a young American girl. Loosely based on the “true story” of Emma Schmidt . . . well, Hollywood is still playing the Jesus vs. Satan game, as the film was released on April 18, 2025 (since pushed back to June 6, 2025, to poor reviews) — and the Christian holiday of Easter fell on April 20th — because there nothing like celebrating the birth of Christ with a demon possession film.
So, to commemorate the 49th anniversary of original, 1976 version of The Omen (why wait until next year; we’ll let The Hollywood Reporter and Variety field that “Golden” 50th anniversary essay), let’s load the tape with 20 Antichrist and demon possession movies from the ’80s home video era: Films you horror-loving youngsters spoiled by today’s digitized “shock scares” oeuvre by the horror-purveyor studios A 24 Films and Blumhouse Productions haven’t seen. For in the drive-in ’70s and the VHS ’80s of celluloid yore: an aspiring filmmaker didn’t need a multi-million dollar budget to make a horror film: the auteur needed only $2,184 dollars to conjure Satan.
“That’s after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash, every movie cost $2,184 dollars.”
— Bobby Bowfinger, Bowfinger (1999)
As result of copyright issues regarding images: The titles for each of the films on this list are hyperlinked to their respective Letterboxd pages that offer theatrical one-sheet images, as well as streaming options.
Additionally, this film essay may fall under the internet shorthand of TL;DR for some readers — overall this essay is intended to be bookmarked for future reference as you explore each of the twenty films.
Please note that the individual entries themselves offer a concise summary of each film.
1. The Stranger Within (1974)
Science fiction novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson (his 1954 novel, I Am Legend, fueled zombie flicks for decades) provides U.S television’s Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie fame a wonderful cast-against-type roll about a previously barren couple who discover they’re going to have a baby.
Well, it didn’t come from the husband: he had a vasectomy. Where it did come from: an alien visited in the night and inseminated her — as well as other women in the city. The husband has no idea what’s going on: as the child grows inside his wife, the alien’s “pregnancy cravings” for raw meat, salt, black coffee (coffee acts like alcohol to the alien), and cold temperatures serve as a pretext for his wife’s newly-discovered healing abilities that destroys the marriage.
As is the case with anything penned by Richard Matheson: his scripting featuring dialog carried by stellar actors makes this more than your typical Rosemary’s Baby knockoff.
2. The Tempter, aka The Antichrist (1974)
While The Stranger Within was a U.S television movie, the European theatrical race to knock off The Exorcist began — with a dash of the earlier Rosemary’s Baby, natch — with Italian writer-director Giallo purveyor Alberto de Martino weaving a tale regarding a Mia Farrow-Rosemary doppelganger who, under a psychiatrist’s care, goes into past-life regression therapy . . . and becomes possessed by a Spanish Inquisition ancestor.
Yes, the ancestor is the feared Antichrist — which was the overseas title until the U.S distributor toned down the offensive religious connotations of the word “Antichrist” for American drive-in audiences, where this was a box office hit.
Yes, the superfluous nudity and swearing is as mind-numbing in its ferocity as it is in its blatant, out-of-control pillaging of its Hollywood inspirations . . . as it only gets stranger with de Martino’s next ode to The Dark Prince — starring multiple U.S Oscar nominee Kirk Douglas!
Post Script: There’s so many films in on the B-List, post-William Friedkin Euro-horror ripoff oeuvre to enjoy: Italian B-movie purveyor Ovidio Assonitis with his box office bonanza, Beyond the Door (1974), Amando de Ossorio’s Demon Witch Child (1975), Mario Gariazzo’s The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (1974), Spain’s Juan Bosch and Paul Naschy with Exorcismo (1975), the master Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1974), the German-made Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil (1974), and Luca Damiano’s The Return of the Exorcist (1975), aka “Exorcist II” and “Exorcist III,” depending upon its later drive-in and VHS reissues.
Hey, hold onto that Crucifix just one minute: Friedkin copped his film’s infamous “spider walk” scene from Brunello Rondi’s Il demonio (1963): the stunning Daliah Lavi does the “walk” (You Tube) sans special effects assistance. So, can we be that critically-hard on these films?
Caveat, Part Deux : Yes, we can. The superfluous nudity and swearing in each of these films are as equally mind-numbing in their ferocity and blatant, out-of-control celluloid theft: for there’s a fine line between homage and ripoff . . . and stupid and clever, as Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel warned us during the Smell the Glove world tour in 1984.
3. The Astrologer, aka The Suicide Cult (1975)
James Glickenhaus, the writer-director behind the drive-in and later home video box office hit regarding a revenge-seeking Vietnam war veteran, The Exterminator (1980), made his debut with this self-produced philosophical religious tale. When reissued to home video — and in the wake of the 1978 Guyana, Jonestown Massacre, it carried the more horror-sensationalistic The Suicide Cult — even though it’s not the least bit “horror.”
So, why is it on this list of forgotten Antichrist films? The VHS sleeve touted the film as being in “The tradition of The Omen,” that’s why.
No, it’s not.
What we are really watching: A part spy-government conspiracy flick (the thriller/suspense part) with a secret agency that uses astrology and biorhythms (the sci-if part) to track down the Antichrist (the horror part) and the coming of the “new” Virgin Mary (the Christploitation part).
The film, on whole, is as boring is it as bonkers in its plotting, as characters talk, and talk, and talk . . . and talk some more with its mixture of religion, science, and political intrigue.
The proceedings center around INTERZOD: a secret government organization that developed a method of combining computer technology with astrology — using an individual’s zodiacal charts correlated to the environment — as a modern-day “Nostradamus” to predict threats to the world. The latest threat is Kajerste: a Jim Jones-inclined cult leader (the VHS title change, natch) wanted for crimes against humanity in three countries, who is believe to be the prophesied Antichrist from The Holy Bible‘s book of The Revelations.
This, of course, is not to be confused with The Astrologer (1976), another lost VHS flick with a movie-within-a-movie plot about diamond smuggling, high-finance, and murder — so “The Astrologer” can become the world’s foremost psychic and movie mogul. Uh, yeah . . . you will have no such confusion: you’ve probably heard of neither film before I told you so.
4. I Don’t Want to Be Born, aka The Devil Within Her (1975)
When esteemed U.S film critic Roger Ebert names a film his official “The Dog of March 1976,” you know your British-produced pastiche of Hollywood’s Antichrist cinema is going to bomb at the box office.
Joan Collins stars as a down-and-out stripper dancing at a sleazy club. Upon sexually humiliating the dwarf that’s part of her act (no, really), he casts a curse: she will have a monster-baby. And she does: painfully, natch. And fresh-from-the-womb baby scratches and bites and drops dead mice (psychically) into cups of tea.
What makes this entertaining: Joan Collins: when it comes to screaming in a horror film — and she really lets it rip — no one does it better than Joan during the golden age of celluloid cinema.
5. God Told Me To (1976)
According to this film’s writer-director, Larry Cohen (the 1985 cable television and home rental favorite, The Stuff): God is one of the most violent characters in literature.
So, take Larry’s religious-philosophical insight . . . and concoct a police procedural drama about an officer involved in some ancient astronaut tomfoolery à la Chariots of the Gods (1970) as a series of killings sweeps New York City in which the perpetrators claim, before their own suicide: “God told me to.”
Wait, it’s not God: It’s Bernard Phillips, the Antichrist himself who according to his mother, is an immaculately concepted alien, you know, just like Jesus (a real academic theory and not just screenwriting hokum).
Oh, and this isn’t Larry Cohen’s first time at the Devil’s Gateway in Stull, Kansas: In 1974, Cohen hornswoggled a U.S major studio, Warner. Bros., in bankrolling It’s Alive: A tale about a couple besieged by a mutant child: one with fangs and claws that kills — spawned not by Satan: but contraceptive drugs. A box office success, the film cleared over $7 million dollars against a $500,000 budget. Years later: Warner Bros. was the studio behind Al Pacino’s The Devil’s Advocate, so, there you go because: The Devil equals box office.
6. Holocaust 2000, aka The Chosen (1977)
How did Stanley Donen — he, the director of the ’50s musical classic, Singin’ in the Rain — convince his old buddy Kirk Douglas to star in the Star Wars dropping that was Saturn 3 (1980) —Kirk’s love of working in the buff with young actresses (Farrah Fawcett) not withstanding — one continues to ponder . . . then this U.S drive-in ditty — under the less Jewish-offensive title of The Chosen — recruits the three-time Oscar nominee in an Antichrist romp. Blame it all on Alberto de Martino helming this Italian-British co-production, back for another bite of the Crucifix after giving us the earlier The Tempter.
What’s it all about?
Uh, well . . . it seems the dreaded beast of the book of Revelation . . . is actually a nuclear power plant built by Kirk’s industrialist, Robert Caine, near a scroll-filled, Middle East-sacred cave. That the plot twist: The Antichrist isn’t an organic person: its an inorganic structure, built by Douglas’s character . . . so doesn’t that make him the Antichrist? No, wait, his son, the aptly named Angel Caine, turns out to be the Antichrist: he’ll use the plant for his own, nefarious purposes.
You’ll be confused, as well, once your concentration on the jumbled plot is broken by Kirk who, regardless of his age: he’s a once again a virile young buck shacking up with a woman half his age.
7. The Inquisition, aka Inquisición (1977)
This Spanish entry is more about “witch hunting” than the rise of the Antichrist. However, unlike the psycho-sexual works of Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General (1968), Michael Armstrong’s Mark of the Devil (1970), and Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) — each of those films inspired (and those films are more sensationalistic and exploitive) by Czech filmmaker Otakar Vavra’s statement of the corruptions of absolute power with Witchhammer (1970) — this Spanish entry really goes over the top of them all.
In this tale: The sexually depravity and spiritual corruption of the Catholic Church-appointed Witchfinder Bernard de Fossey (Paul Naschy, who writes, but also in his directing debut), actually, to his surprise, conjures a reincarnation of Satan, aka The Antichrist.
The caveat: When Paul Naschy conjures an “Antichrist,” rest assured Ol’ Scratch enjoys lots naked women and the ripping of their nipples.
This, of course, is not to be confused with The Inquisitor (1975), a Peruvian-Argentine co-production dealing with occultism. Uh, yeah . . . you will have no such confusion: you’ve probably heard of neither film before I told you so.
8. The Late Great Planet Earth (1978)
Narration by Orson Welles intersperses the biblical reenactments, as chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling talking-head academics babble n’ prattle to stock footage of war and starving children, then warn about planetary alignments and supercomputers running the name “Ronald Reagan” through numerology algorithms to determine if he is the dreaded Antichrist as it piles on the Russian and Chinese hate.
Oh, Hal Lindsay, how you frightened us kiddies unlike no other Italian or Spanish ripoff pedlar before or since. His PreMillenialist Dispensationalist pontificates in the pages of his 1970 book of the same name — as did Roman Polanksi’s, William Friedkin’s and Richard Donner’s respective films films — spawned a cottage industry of eschatological films: a theology concerned with the final events of history as told in The Bible.
Assisted by Southern Baptist preacher Estus Pirkle, ’60s drive-in purveyor Ron Ormand and his filmmaking family produced a series of end-of-the-world and possession films: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do (1971), The Burning Hell (1974), The Grim Reaper (1976), The Believer’s Heaven (1977), and 39 Stripes (1979). Meanwhile, drive-in indie writer-director Donald W. Thompson, like Ron Ormond, began in secular films, then transitioned into Evangelical Christian Cinema to profess his faith. His pioneering “Rapture” tetralogy series encompasses the “Jesus sci-fi” films A Thief in the Night (1972), A Distant Thunder (1978), Image of the Beast (1980), and The Prodigal Planet (1983).
Each of these films — as well as the other films on this list — are classified as “Christploitation” or “Godsploitation” in critical circles. As with any -ploitation sub-genre of films, such as the “Blaxploitation” or “Hicksploitation”¹ cycles: Someone is exploited: instead of African-Americans or Southerners, Jesus Christ and Satan are used for celluloid financial gain.
9. The Manitou (1978)
William Girdler was a U.S low-budget drive-in auteur who specialized in horror films, self-producing his first film, Asylum of Satan (1971). His seventh film, the land-based Jaws rip-off, Grizzly, was one of the U.S top-ten grossing films released in 1976, as well as the most profitable independently-produced film in history — at that point.
This Antichrist Cinema entry is a dual-ploitation film: Not only does it fall under the “God/Christploitaion” tag: it also carries a “Trollsploitation” albatross as result of multiple award-nominated-and-winning actor Tony Curtis finishing his career in a horror film, along with unjustly considered past-their-prime actors Stella Stevens, Ann Southern, and Burgess Meredith: he’s a “troll”; the gals are “hags.”
“Trollsploition” is the male-version of “Hagsploitation” films that featured former starlets from the 1940s and 1950s finding work in horror films, which were also known as the “Psychobiddy” sub-gerne: a genre where old, crusty women either terrorized “sinning” young women or are simply jealous of the girl’s youth, so they “gaslight” them into insanity.
Examples of hag-films are Edith Atwater and Joan Crawford starring in Straight-Jacket (1964). Crawford did it again in Berserk! (1967) and Trog (1970), while Atwater appeared in Die Sister, Die! (1971). Then there’s Tallulah Bankhead with Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), studio starlet Veronica Lake took her final bow with Flesh Feast (1970), Wanda Hendrix closed out her career at the age of 44 with the Gothic, Civil War tale, The Oval Portrait (1972), and ex-20th Century Fox studio-starlet Jeanne Crain attempted a comeback with The Night God Screamed (1971).
So with the aged-out actresses as “hags,” the aged-out actors became “trolls” — with multiple award-nominated and winning actor Mickey Rooney starring in the gaslighter, The Manipulator (1971), which also starred another one of those “aged-out” actresses: the gaslighted Luana Anders of the oft-UHF-TV aired The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and Dementia 13 (1963). Even Rock Hudson jumped into the fray with the body-horror, Embryo (1976). Fritz Weaver took a sci-fi route with The Demon Seed (1977).
Okay, back to The Manitou.
The cover of the best-selling, 1976 novel by Graham Masterson — on which the film is based — claims the story is “As spine-chilling as The Omen.” While the book certainly is: the movie, not so much. The movie’s original release tagline laments: “Evil does not die . . . it waits to be reborn” — and the “reborn” is the Native American version of the Antichrist (against the grain of being a white European-bred male, as in other films). When The Manitou was reissued on the bottom of drive-in double bills in the wake of Alien (1979), the new tagline touted: “In the grisly tradition of Alien.”
Tony Curtis stars as Harry Erskine: a renowned, yet sham psychic who meets his match when a young woman suffering from a giant growth inside her neck — discovered to be a human fetus that causes her to levitate, natch— is actually the reincarnation of the evil spirit, Misquamacus. The unholy medicine man’s quest, however, isn’t spiritual or biblical: he’s out for revenge on the white men who invaded North America and exterminated its native peoples.
Most quarters dismiss The Manitou as not being a very good film. Well, maybe it is: The American Indian Antichrist clawing and tearing its way out of actress Susan Strasberg’s body — with Tony Curtis going for broke at the risk of not chewed, but devoured, scenery — is a sight to behold.
So much for “washed up” actors, aka hags n’ trolls, delivering the goods during the now bygone drive-in era of U.S cinema.
Oh, and Tony Curtis does it again, sci-fi style, with BrainWaves (1982): German director Ulli Lommel’s take on the genre with, instead of demon possession: a “brainwave transfer” from a dead patient into a dying patient causes the horror havoc.
10. The Visitor (1979)
Did you hear the one where Italian writer-director Ovidio G. Assonitis, he of the Jaws ripoff that swapped out a killer shark for a killer octopus in Tentacles (1977), and Giulio Paradisi, he who worked with Fellini on 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita, decided to cash-in on The Omen with a cross between Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods (1970) meets Rosemary’s Baby?
So goes this tale regarding the soul of a telekinetic young girl at the center of a war between God and the Devil.
Italian cinema tough guy Franco Nero is a space god? Check.
Sam Peckinpah — yes, the director of western classic The Wild Bunch — as an abortionist who removes one of the space babies? Check.
John Huston — yes, the director of cinematic classics The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen — as an angel to stop Zathaar, aka Satan, the “bad alien” from succeeding? Check.
Lance Henriksen, he of the beloved vampire romp Near Dark and sci-fi classic Aliens, as an ersatz Ted Turner media mogul who wants the power?
Oh, yes, it’s all there . . . and it just goes on and on . . . The Bad Seed meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind? We thought Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970) was a chore to interpret: we think again.
11. The Godsend (1980)
As with the previously discussed The Manitou: Angela Pleasence (1974’s stellar psych-horrors From Beyond the Grave and Symptoms), the daughter of Donald Pleasence (1978’s Halloween) stars in this British production based on Bernard Taylor’s 1976 novel of the same name.
The “godsend” in this case: an adopted angelic, blonde-haired brown-eyed infant girl. The movie’s message: never adopt an infant girl from a strange, pregnant woman who follows you home, only to give birth in your home. As the child grows, she develops mind control (makes playground swings swing-out-of-control), murders her four step-siblings, breaks up the parents’ marriage, and kills her step mother’s unborn child.
Things like this happen when the theatrical one-sheet features a red-faced child with glowing eyes superimposed inside an upside down Crucifix; that, and when the parents are just plain dumb when it comes to protecting their children from a female-Damien.
This Antichrist Cinema entry may be a passing interest to Star Trek fans: Gabrielle Beaumont, the first woman to direct an episode, “The Booby Trap (S3: E6)” of the original series, is behind the lens, here.
12. Fear No Evil (1981)
In this low-budget rip on The Omen, which earned drive-in bank on its way to becoming a top VHS rental: As a bullied high school student, à la Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), turns 18: he discovers he’s the prophetic Antichrist. (Yes, Carrie: Yet another, fourth U.S box-office, religious-horror hit perpetually ripped off by lesser, cash-strapped Euro filmmakers.)
Andrew is a dorky, weirdo bookworm who spends his days as a punching bag. Before you know it: Andrew has paralyzed his mother, his dad is in the booby hatch, and his mortal bully-enemy, spouts breasts.
Yes, the baby Jesus is murdered — but don’t worry — it’s during the town’s annual Passion Play. Then Andrew — looking more like an ’80s glam rocker than a demon — lays waste to the town with a zombie apocalypse.
Yes. This movie — depending on one’s celluloid tastes, or lack there of — is as amazing and strange as it sounds.
13. Reborn (1981)
Well, there’s no actual “exorcism,” à la The Exorcist, but it’s all for the love Bigas Luna: another one of those European filmmakers I rave about that no one I know cares about like I do.
Mixing the erotic with the spiritual: Reborn is a semi-biographical, religious fantasy piece that questions faith as it explores Luna’s own Catholicism and ponders the outcome if one could actually acquire Christ-like healing powers.
Uh, oh. Dennis Hooper is in this: this film will be bonkers, natch.
Hooper is the bible-bangin’ fire n’ brimstone maniacal Rev. Tom Hartley — our “Antichrist,” if you will: an American televangelist-head of a racketeering revivalist church with a perpetual hand in the collection plate exploiting a young woman’s abilities of “hearing” the Holy Ghost, speak.
14. Bloody Sect, aka Secta siniestra (1982)
Spain’s “Roger Corman,” Ignacio F. Iquino, is another European filmmaker I go on and on about to the chagrin of the many.
In his only horror film: Iggy takes no chances with his take on the birth of the Antichrist as he clips verbatim scenes from The Omen, as well as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and David Cronenberg Rabid, along with gooey and slimy, stylistic soupçons from the mad Italian horror-quartet Joe D’Amato, Ruggero Deodato, Jess Franco, and Bruno Mattei. There’s probably and ode or two to Brian De Palma’s Carrie, as well, oh, there is!
Did you know Satan has a prostate that produces sperm? (Does he take Cranberry Urinary Tract Health pills?) Yes, Ol’ Scratch has swimmers and a crazed fertility doctor possessing “a vial of Satan’s sperm” is on a vision quest to artificially inseminate his comely patient — so as to bring forth the birth of the Antichrist.
As with the Italians: This Spanish production gives no quarter as it piles on the plot absurdities amid the gooey gore and sleaziest of sleaze. And you wonder why you’ve only heard of Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist and not this Euro-VHS import.
15. The Next One (1984)
Unlike most of the films on this list, The Next One — which aired on U.S pay cable movie networks as the more-aptly titled, The Time Traveler — eschews the usual horror elements concerning supernatural-spiritual beings instead delving into sci-fi fantasy. It’s a dramatic tale about a lonely widow of an American astronaut who escapes to a Greek Island retreat with her young son.
One day, on the island of Mykonos in the Aegean Sea, along a deserted beach: they discover a naked man (a really great Keir Dullea from 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) washed up during a magnetic storm. Suffering from amnesia at first, a romantic relationship develops between the two — as “Glenn” discovers and understands his ability to perform miracles.
The plot-twist: He’s the time-traveling brother of Jesus . . . or the reincarnation of Jesus . . . or something . . . but he’s not the least bit “Anti” in his actions.
16. Prince of Darkness (1987)
So, John Wayne made Rio Bravo (1959) in response to Gary Cooper’s western classic, High Noon (1952), and John Carpenter made Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) as a homage to the Wayne-starring classic. Then, Assault on Precinct 13 became The Ghost of Mars (2001), which itself was a failed, third sequel to Escape from New York (1981) called Escape from Mars.
Wait, what was the point being made: Oh, that John Carpenter produces a lot of remakes: of his films and others’ films. In this Antichrist case: Carpenter unofficially retooled Hammer Studios’ British sci-fi classic, Quartermass and the Pit (1967), for a paltry $3 million dollars. (Where credit is due: Carpenter puts a quality film on screen under slight budgets).
So, as the characters prattle about theoretical physics and atomic theory: We learn that a canister of green liquid discovered in an abandoned church is the essence of The Antichrist. Yeah, before you know it: we are back in Carpenter’s old 13th precinct haunts with another Rio Bravo variant as we hear about theories that Jesus is actually an alien and the Catholic Church covered it up and the world will end in 1999.
Oh, and notice how the world didn’t end during the Y2K scare. Just saying.
17. Ritual of Death (1990)
Brazilian filmmaker Fauzi Mansur created low-budget, obscure messes with awful English dubbing, but the films were never not entertaining. He wrote and directed his first film in 1969 and made a total of 41 films— mostly soap opera-styled sexploitation flicks known as “Pornochachada” in his homeland.
As is the case with any low-budgeted overseas offering on U.S home video: Ritual of Death — in its unique, amateur ridiculousness that comes in both “X” and “NR” ratings for violence on the VHS sleeve — rips off Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1984) as it tosses in a soupçon of A Nightmare on Elm Street and a dash of Poltergeist (1982) off the Rosemary’s Baby-Exorcist-Omen spice racks.
So, our Freddy Kruger-styled Antichrist beleaguers an amateur acting troupe (both on screen and the troupe they portray, natch) working on a stage play adaptation of an Egyptian “Book of the Dead” they stole from a museum. Brad, the auteur of our merry band of thespian travelers, is already a bit around the bend because, well, he’s into Satanism (of course he is), and the ancient text triggers hallucinations of an ancient Indian ritual held under the bowls of the theater . . . as Brad acquires an insatiable lunch-time taste for raw goat livers downed with a cold glass of milk.
So, uh, guess who’s cast as “The Executioner,” the lead of the play . . . as his hallucination become reality? Now Brad is in full costume, unleashing the obligatory goat heads and frogs as we learn Brad is not real: he’s a ghost that wants to return to flesh and the bad actors from Rio are part of the reanimation process.
Yeah, the budgetary proceedings are less Antichristy than Spaniard Paul Naschy’s The Inquisition, aka Inquisición — but it is still the same demon possession movie.
Oh, there’s a not-very-good Australian film that pulls the same Freddy Kruger change-up with a Poltergeist two-step: Kadaicha, aka Stones of Death (1988), with the same U.S film, Indian medicine man hokum, only The Devil is aboriginal.
18. The Sect (1991)
Oh, trust me when I tell you: No one does the Antichrist and his minions better than the Italians: the movies are always bonkers and this one is no exception.
In this tale, writer-director Michele Soavi (Stage Fright, The Church) and producer Dario Argento (Susprria) speculates on the long-gestating theory that there is a real life, worldwide Satanic “army of evil” responsible for everything from the Manson Family murders of the ’60s to the Son of Sam murders of the ’80s.
Okay, but what in the . . . a German schoolteacher is impregnated by a giant bird that opens a glowing, blue gateway to Hell in a basement that will unleash the Antichrist to Earth?
Yes, that’s the short-version synopsis that doesn’t even begin to describe this film’s crazed, biblical non, non sequiturs.
19. Raging Angels (1995)
Okay, so we are cheating: This isn’t an Omen-styled flick: this is a “Satanic Panic” flick about the Devil using rock music — by way of the Antichrist (so there you go)— to control the world. While this was released in the ’90s, the beleaguered production was completed during the end of the Hair Metal ’80s — when heavy metal music collided with the John Carpenter-inspired “Slasher Films” cycle to create the decade’s “Metalsploitation” genre.
Michael Paré, of Eddie and the Cruisers fame, stars as a religious rocker, working as the Antichrist’s #2 — fronting an organization pushing for a one-world government. An aspiring rocker, aka our angel Gabriel (or is it Micheal), played by Sean Patrick Flanery of The Boondock Saints fame, tries to stop the Rapture and the rise of the Antichrist.
Well, if the Paré and Flanery connection doesn’t inspire a watch: Perhaps the Christian heavy metal, aka “White Metal,” band, Holy Soldier, appearing with their rendition of “Gates of Babylon” from the ’70s-era Ronnie James Dio-era of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow . . . as you ponder the awful CGI of it all . . . will inspire a watch.
Hey, that’s Hollywood golden girls Shelly Winters and Diane Ladd “Hagsploitating” the joint, as a psychic with a connection to the Antichrist and a fire n’ brimstone preacher, natch, making a pay check, doing what they can to battle the evil.
20. The Judas Project (1993)
While many modern-day religious flicks have an apocalyptic setting concerned with the return of the Antichrist: This film dares to be a science-fiction Jesus movie about , well, how can the Antichrist rise . . . if Jesus Christ hasn’t arrived on the Earth, yet?
Oh, okay, we get, now: This movie is a modernized, fictionalized retelling of the story of Jesus in the pages of the Synoptic Gospels, the first three books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, and Luke — as if The Holy Savior, aka “Jesse,” arrived in our late 20th century. The message, however, is the same old salvation trope: Humanity is in peril, so God sends forth a son in the form of a man named Jesus, sorry, Jesse, to save mankind from the impending terror that will destroy the Earth by way of the coming Antichrist.
Christian heads roll as they are perpetually threatened by machine guns. Meanwhile, Judas Iscariot cruises around in a white Rolls Royce as Jesse-Jesus battles a phalanx of helicopters — but not before he mysteriously appears on a beach to feed a crowd of people with an endless supply of cheese n’ crackers (really) as they search for a lost boy. No, he’s not called “Jesse Christ” by his flock.
Yes. You read this synopsis correctly. This is a real movie: Jesus and helicopters and cheese n’ crackers. And we thought Paul and Jan Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network had the lock on “Jesus sci-fi” with their Omega Code franchise in the late ’90s starring Micheal York as the Antichrist.
English poet and polemicist John Milton summed it best across the twelve books of his epic, 1667 poem, Paradise Lost.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
Sure, we can have a little fun reviewing these VHS orphans from the ’80s home video era; however, in a serious moment: Books and movies that delve into the evil and supernatural, depending one’s personal art choices, are entertaining. But rest assure: You do not have to worry about any supernatural devils or demons torturing you, possessing you, or taking your soul: you only see a devil when you want to see a devil. God doesn’t send down punishments from above nor does Satan belch upward tortures from below.
Don’t look up in the sky or down into the Earth for answers: Look within . . . and you’ll find your heaven inside yourself.
