20 Horror Movies Everyone Remembers For Just One Scene
11. The Omen - The Death Scenes
The story of Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), a creepy little boy who turns out to be the son of the Devil, is most memorable for the mad ways in which it kills its characters. On multiple occasions, The Omen echoes Final Destination, even though it preceded that franchise by a quarter-century.
At Damien's birthday party, his nanny (Holly Palance) cheerfully exclaims, "Look at me, Damien! It's all for you!" before dramatically hanging herself from the mansion's roof. A priest named Father Brennan, having tried unsuccessfully to warn the boy's adopted parents of his true nature, is impaled when a lightning rod falls from a church during a storm and spears him. That sequence will be especially unsettling for many modern nerds as that priest is played by none other than Patrick Troughton, who was famously the second incarnation of Doctor Who.
And, most memorably of all, supporting character Keith (David Warner) is gruesomely decapitated by a sliding pane of glass in a sequence that must've given audiences of the day the terrors. Such graphic violence was not the norm back then. Damien's adoptive parents also get bruising demises.
The rest of the film is good but not great supernatural fare that's lost some bite thanks to its age and its many imitators. These deaths are by far the most unique part of the movie, and are arguably the main thing that has allowed The Omen to endure as a minor horror classic.