Final Conflict, The

A cabal of killer monks attempt to destroy the Antichrist Damien Thorn, as he squares up to the Second Coming of Christ in the final instalment of the Omen trilogy.
On 22 January 1987, the day before he was due to be sentenced for bribery, US Republican Politician Robert 'Budd' Dwyer called a press conference to "provide an update on the situation". Greeting the assembled TV reporters, he told them he was not, in fact, announcing his resignation (the reason they thought they'd been invited) and after a speech pleading for his vindication, distributed manila envelopes containing, among other things, a suicide note to his wife and an organ donor card. Advising people to "leave the room if this offends you," he withdrew a .357 Magnum from another envelope, warning "Stay away - this thing will hurt someone." Amid shouts of protest, he quickly placed the gun against the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. As he slumped to the floor, his heart continued to pump blood through his nose and lips in thick, sticky streams. The entire footage was shown that night on WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, while middle-America sat down for meatloaf.

An extreme case of life imitating art, the gruesome episode mirrors a pivotal scene from Omen III: The Final Conflict, in which a hell-hypnotised American Ambassador to Britain (or "England", according to the screenplay) rigs a rifle to his door handle, Heath Robinson-fashion, calls a press conference to his office, and before a gathering of hysterical journalists (and secretary Ruby Wax), redecorates his back wall with 'Neural Mist' by Dulux. In hindsight, it's one of the few believable elements in the entire shooting match. As lavishly scored and photographed as The Final Conflict is, the remainder's all but bound for Hell in a rickshaw.

The final instalment in the Omen trilogy is such a god awful mess it's hard to know where to start, and it's not as if the set-up's exactly complicated. At 32, Damien Thorn (Sam Neill, looking every inch the bad weasel, but every inch the eye-rolling panto-villain in practicality) is chair of the Thorn Corporation, and now turns his wolfish gaze on the senate. Regular Omen watchers will have already gathered something's seriously amiss here: Thorn plans to run in 1984, suggesting the film is set around 1982. But The Omen was set in 1976; the timeline has all but collapsed. Worryingly for Damien, there's a stork on the way: according to prophecy, Jesus is to be born again, on 24th March on the "Isle of Angels", in the body of a baby - as opposed to dropping out the skies, fully-formed, flaming scimitar in hand - only Hollywood would have the audacity to rewrite the Good Book. Also ranged against him are seven vigilante monks, led by Father DeCarlo (an hilariously-accented Brazzi), who plan to smooth Christ's landing by offing Damien with the seven daggers of Meggido. As we've gathered from the previous movies, the daggers must be thrust in cruciform pattern in the Antichrist's back, on consecrated ground, to ensure his elimination; yet flaunting the textbook, each killer hoodie is equipped with just one knife to dispatch him with.

These monks (Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy et al) are worse than absolutely useless in carrying out their mission. The first scales a studio gantry during a live TV interview and trips, turning himself into a charcoal briquette in the process and so leaving one to wonder how he proposed to carry out the stabbing in the first place - surely not by leaping 20ft onto the studio floor and breaking both ankles? Other monks wither pathetically before Thorn's twinkle-eyed gaze, rooted to the spot while Damien sets a pack of hunting hounds on them, or tricks them into mistaking their own number for the target.

As if acknowledging his lack of evilness up to this point (this put-upon Antichrist buys flowers for his weedy henchman's expecting wife), Damien pulls a Herod-style stunt to halt the Nazarene's rebirth, ordering his 'Disciples of the Watch', including nurses, vicars and boy scouts, to kill all baby boys born at the appointed day and hour - rather undermining his position as president of the UN's Youth Council. We're later told every baby has been murdered - making a nonsense of the fact the one that counts has actually survived (this only makes sense in the novelisation, in which we learn the Christ child was born to gypsies, masking the usual paper-trails). The climax, in which a power-sapped Damien staggers through a ruined church calling for his rival - presumably armed with a blunt rattle and a sharpened rusk - to face him, is one of the most misjudged in cinema history. With Damien dead, at the hands of a literal back-stabbing journalist (who knew?), a 50ft Christ reveals himself fully-grown, bathed in the glow of mediocrity, to a pious choir. No cochlea-melting trumpets, no Stanley Spencer corpses hurling their coffin lids aside in Cookham - this Second Coming's one fat anti-climax.

So what's the Good News? Well, Jerry Goldsmith's score and Meheux and Paynter's cinematography's certainly arresting, and the murders are indulgently gory. The opening, especially, in which the seven daggers are unearthed from the Thorn Museum and find their way into DeCarlo's hands, is a masterpiece of set-up, as the hunting scene is in editing. Damien's exhortations to his father (taken directly from JK Huysmans' novel 'L??-Bas') are just glorious, resembling Nietzsche in party mode, as Damien refers to Christ's "grubby, mundane creed" with its "repellent dogma of original sin". All slightly undermined, unfortunately, by his promise that Satan will condemn the world to "...a brief recession".
Verdict
The trilogy goes out like a wet matchstick.