The Final Conflict: Omen III (1981)

The little bastard is back.

The Final Conflict: Omen III (1981)
Directed by: Graham Baker
Written by: Andrew Birkin

As a scary-looking machine drills a tunnel beneath Chicago, a worker discovers a dirt clod transfixed by a dagger. He withdraws the blade, and is rightwise declared King of England, or Employee of the Month, or something.

A swing choir invades Sotheby’s, and sings upbeat selections from the Satan Big Note Songbook during a cutlery auction.

A bald guy delivers a complete set of steak knives to a monastery in Italy, where the utensils are French-kissed by a Friar.

Suddenly, we cut to a Bell Laboratories instructional film on the Ice Age.

Damien Thorn, spawn of the devil, sits in a private screening room, where he bitterly critiques the Ice Age footage because it will not advance his campaign for world domination, and because it reminds him of rainy days in the junior high Cafetorium, and the smell of Tater Tots and Sloppy Joes.

Back in his office, Damien predicts the Second Coming, and attempts to conceal his total ignorance of scripture by quoting at length from a previously unknown chapter of the Bible, “the Book of S&H Green Stamps.”

In London, the United States Ambassador is uneasy, convinced that he’s being followed through Hyde Park by a dwarf with a Handycam. Panicking, he turns the wrong corner and comes face-to-face with a vicious rottweiler. The demon dog hypnotizes the ambassador, promising to help him quit smoking, but instead compels him to commit suicide in a ridiculously baroque manner, involving guns and doorknobs and typewriter ribbons, and the unexpected arrival of Up With People.

Back in Washington, the guy who did the voiceovers for those Smuckers jam commercials has been elected President of the United States for some reason, and he appoints Damien ambassador to Great Britain, and president of the Young Republicans for Satan. Meanwhile, somewhere in England, two astronomers discover an amazing—even biblical—convergence of three celestial bodies, which is pretty impressive considering they were just playing “Asteroids.”

Back at the Italian monastery, the monks distribute the steak knives, the only weapon on Earth that can kill the Anti-Christ, and vow that they will hunt him down and slay him, and still be able to slice a tomato so thin you can see through it.

In Britain, Damien is a huge success as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and earns kudos from the entire diplomatic community for not killing himself. Determined to win over the press, he seduces a BBC newswoman by giving her son a slavering hell-beast and some valuable tips on how to achieve the Dry Look.

The monks begin their holy quest, but as hunters, they turn out to be slightly less effective than Elmer Fudd. (“Be vewwy quiet...I’m hunting Anti-Chwists!”). They track Damien to a television studio, but the assassination goes awry when the killer-monk accidentally sets himself on fire and winds up hanging upside down by one ankle and swinging around the room like a wrecking ball as he knocks over the set.

Damien immediately deduces that something is amiss. Either a band of incompetent, Ginsu-wielding monks are attempting to assassinate him, or else the Cirque du Soleil auditions were an abysmal failure.

Damien goes into his Secret Fort to play with his My Size Jesus, but gets into one of those my-Dad-can-beat-up-your-Dad arguments, and then he cuts his hand on the crown of thorns and has to go in early.

Meanwhile, the three stars noticed by the video game-playing astronomers have aligned over London, signaling that England—so often snubbed by the International Olympic Committee—has won the competition to host the Second Coming.

With Christ now returned to Earth and time of the essence, the monks make another attempt on Damien’s life, this time by accidentally stabbing each other, then locking themselves in a tomb and dying of starvation.

To thwart the Second Coming, Damien decrees the death of every male infant born on the day of the harmonic convergence. But first, he goes fox hunting, giving the monks yet another chance to assassinate him. They fail, but do succeed in assassinating the fox.

Rallying, a monk on horseback pulls his dagger and charges Damien, but almost immediately falls off the horse, and then off a bridge. The remaining assassin is torn apart by Springer spaniels.

In a cave somewhere, the Antichrist conducts an Anthony Robbins-style seminar for a covenful of Satanists, and charges his pale, doughy disciples with the task of slaying “the Nazarene.” But first, he makes them walk on hot coals and buy his complete set of self-motivation tapes.

The surviving monk pays a visit to the BBC newswoman. He reveals that Damien bears the devil’s mark on the back of his head, which is concealed by the Anti-Christ’s cunning use of a volumizing shampoo.

Through a process of elimination, Damien deduces that the Christ child was born to his own private secretary. Irritated that it’s always in the last place you look, Damien orders the disciple to slay his infant son. But the man refuses, defying his demonic master because Damien didn’t get him anything for Secretary’s Day.

Meanwhile, the newswoman gets into a battle of wills with Damien over her son, whose Dry Look is now preternatural. In exchange for sole custody, she offers to lead Damien to the Christ child, who is sheltering in a cathedral.

Damien starts searching the nave for a baby. Fed up with the whole thing, the newswoman stabs him in the back with the sanctified Ginsu, producing a terrifying shriek as the wound releases Damien’s inner James Brown. There’s a prolonged bit of shaking, jittering, and scenery-chewing, followed by the sad but inevitable death of the Hardest-Working Anti-Christ in show business.

So, The Final Conflict: a film about American diplomacy in action! Like The Omega Code, this movie is loosely based on the book of Revelation, as well as other Christian eschatology about Antichrists and hair-care products. It also is a lesson about the importance of reading the Bible, especially if you’re mentioned in it. See, the Bible (specifically Acts 1:11, as the movie thoughtfully points out), specifies that Christ will return the same way he left: not by rebirth, but through special effects. But Damien spends all his time looking for a baby in a manger; so, it’s pretty obvious that Our Little Antichrist never bothered to read the Good Book, which is like having a copy of the enemy’s war plans but never looking at them because you’re too busy watching She’s the Sheriff. Clearly, Damien got into college on the strength of his family name, and not his SATs. Learn from his mistakes.