10 Best "What's Around The Corner" Horror Movie Moments
7. Damien's Real Mother - The Omen (1973)
The Exorcist it may not be, but Richard Donner's The Omen is still a spine-tingling chiller buttressed by a typically stoic turn from Gregory Peck and a peak David Warner - plus one of the finest horror scores produced thanks to composer Jerry Goldsmith.
The Omen's most iconic sequences are arguably the death of Father Brennan, who is impaled by a lightning rod, and the closing frames, where a triumphant Damien - now with the U.S. First Family - turns and grins straight at the camera. As great as these respective scenes are, the peak of The Omen's horror occurs during its middle third, where Peck's Robert Thorn and Warner's Keith Jennings are in the thralls of their investigation.
Having travelled to Italy, where Thorn was previously stationed as a diplomat and where Damien was born, the duo unearth a series of unsettling discoveries that eventually lead them to a graveyard in the Italian countryside. Opening two graves should finally give Thorn the answers he seeks: who Damien's real mother is, and what became of his son.
The build-up to and actual act of this discovery is The Omen's finest hour. Goldsmith's score swells, Jennings and Thorn peel back the gravestone of Damien's real mother, and reveal the carcass of a jackal. It's a morbid discovery, but David Seltzer's script leaves the worst discovery for last. Thorn, desperately clinging to the hope that his real child might be alive, opens the other gravestone, revealing the skeleton of a baby with a gaping head wound - his baby.
Thorn and Jennings exit pursued by hounds of hell - terror accentuated by Goldsmith's booming choir. One of the best horror scenes in the film, and an all-timer moment of discovery.