THE OMEN 1976

On the topic of the durability of certain horror films/suspense thrillers, a defining factor for me has always been whether or not the film in question continues to “work” long after its employment of the genre’s raison dˈêtre (suspense, shocks, twists, surprises) have become well-known and anticipated.

For all its considerable merits, I don’t really regard The Omen as a classic horror film in the vein of, say, Rosemary’s Baby (1968) or Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973)—it’s a tad too silly and market-calculated for that. However, I do consider it a classic “scary movie” in that it skillfully and stylishly makes good on its dominant purpose: to provide audiences with a rollicking good time while scaring the bejesus out of them.

Gregory Peck as Ambassador Robert Thorn

Lee Remick as Katherine Thorn

David Warner as Keith Jennings

Billie Whitelaw as Mrs. Baylock

Harvey Stephens as Damien Thorn

A characteristic of many of my favorite horror films, certainly those I consider to be classics, is the sense that they emerge out of a larger social unease or cultural anxiety. That they are able to translate the vulnerability and unease that lies at the core of fear into a narrative that serves as the cathartic expression of a vague, unarticulated sense of dread. The kind of unnamed anxiety that can lie just below the surface normalcy of calm. Rosemary’s Baby found its scares in the cultural instability of the '60s; Invasion of the Body Snatchers—the emphasis on postwar conformity and the threat of communism; The Stepford Wives—gender role reevaluation in the wake of feminism.
These films understand that merely scaring an audience is to elicit a temporary reaction: a fleeting sensation akin to making them laugh at the unexpected. For a movie to inspire real fear, it has to draw upon something infinitely more complex and deep-rooted. Films that understand this basic principle manage to enthrall and engage audiences years after the “spoilers” of their scare gimmicks have become common knowledge.

Patrick Troughton as Father Brennan
A lapsed Catholic about to get the point

Like that other favorite scary movie of mine, The Exorcist, The Omen is one of those rare horror films that rely heavily on shock effects yet still manage to play fairly well the second and third time around. The over-the-top excesses of The Exorcist benefit significantly from the seriousness of intent and absolute conviction of its filmmakers (both director William Friedkin and author William Peter Blatty see the film as an earnest treatise on the mystery of faith). The Omen, on the other hand, in spite of publicity-friendly lip service paid by self-serious screenwriter David Seltzer and co-creator/religious technical advisor Robert L. Munger, never convinces that it actually believes in its own pseudo-religious hokum. Rather, it feels like a scare-the-pants-off-America project dreamt up by a sophisticated William Castle (if one can imagine such a being).

Borrowing liberally from all that came before it while inventing a few tricks of its own along the way, The Omen is a skillful cut-and-paste of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Bad Seed, all designed to cash in on the post-Exorcist interest in the occult, the trend toward increasingly graphic depictions of violence in films, and the universal suspicion that all bratty children are likely the spawn of Satan.

Fans of religious supernatural horror will note that while no witches, tannis roots, or yellow cat eyes are in attendance, The Omen, for all intents and purposes, narratively begins where Rosemary’s Baby ends: with the birth of the human antichrist into an unsuspecting world.

Through a suspiciously serendipitous coincidence of tragedies, American Ambassador Robert Thorn (Peck) is granted an orphaned infant born at the very second his emotionally fragile wife Katherine (Remick) has given birth to a stillborn child. At 6am on June 6th, no less.

Displaying a curious lack of concern for origins and paper trails for a politician, loving husband Robert decides to pull a Folger's Crystals switch on his wife and present the bouncing baby boy bundle as their own without telling her (she’s emotionally fragile, y’know). A child they christen Damien, a name even Minnie Castevet might find a tad Satan-y. 

The origin of Katherine's escalating belief that Damien wants to kill her might be traced to her letting him go about with this haircut

As a still-photo montage illustrates, life is rosy for the Thorn family until Damien turns five, when, it must be assumed, all hell literally breaks loose. At this time, I’d say violent death begins to follow little disaffected Damien around like a puppy, but he already has one of those. A rather king-sized, vicious-looking Rottweiler capable of devouring several puppies in one gulp, in fact, courtesy of one Mrs. Baylock (Whitelaw): mysterious replacement nanny and possessor of the least-huggable name in live-in childcare.

The previous nanny, about to give notice
That's Holly Palance, daughter of actor Jack Palance

It takes time, a little persuasion, and a rising body count, but Robert Thorn eventually comes to learn and believe that his adopted son was indeed born of a jackal, bears the mark of the beast (that dreaded 666 area code), and is the living antichrist. Will Robert be able to avert Armageddon and carry out the requisite ritual execution that will save mankind? Well, The Omen being followed by two sequels and a remake should give you a clue.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Being raised Catholic and coming from an extravagantly dysfunctional family has given me a leg-up in appreciating horror films that use specious religious scripture as the catalyst for familial turmoil. In fact, newcomers to The Omen, familiar only with its reputation, are often disappointed to discover that director Richard Donner (Superman: The Movie), following in the footsteps of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and eventually paving the way for The Shining, has made The Omen just as much a psychological thriller about the emotional and mental disintegration of a family as it is a horror film about the unleashing of the Ultimate Evil.
The Omen's questionable scenario of a father surreptitiously swapping his newborn child is made credible by the implication that Kathy is in some way emotionally and psychologically incapable of withstanding the truth of having lost her child at birth. Moreover, the parental, almost caretaker attitude Thorn adapts toward his wife, plus the ease with which he's persuaded to take the orphan child,  suggests an existing stress in the marriage before the film even begins. 

Kathy: "We're the 'Beautiful People, aren't we?"
A significant part of The Omen's drama concerns itself with the internal erosion of a family deemed to "have it all." Although contemporary audiences may be disappointed by the film's pace and relatively low body count, most appreciate that the film takes the time to establish an atmosphere of normalcy before the introduction of chaos

Although nowhere near as subtle as Rosemary's Baby in casting suspicious events in such a light as to leave open the possibility of their malevolence being merely a manifestation of the fragile mental state of its protagonist, The Omen does manage to wring considerable tension out of Kathy's can't-quite-put-her-finger-on-it unease around her child by effectively refraining from having Damien behave in any manner that can be deemed suspicious or overtly sinister. (Not true of the heinous 2006 remake, which had its Damien affect a perpetual evil scowl, which, in a child, only looks like persistent tummy trouble).

For the Thorns, a wealthy political couple with their eye on the Presidency, a child represents the realization of an idealized "perfect" family. And indeed, for a time, the three enjoy an idyllic, picture-perfect bonding period. But, somewhat provocatively, Damien's true nature doesn't manifest itself in the performance of devilish deeds but in a devoted mother having to confront the disquieting notion that not only is she afraid of her child, but perhaps doesn't even like him. The cracks in the Thorn marriage begin to show, unspoken tensions arise, and the end of the world is harkened by a family being emotionally and mentally torn apart at the seams

Little Devil

One of the main reasons The Omen doesn't play out as preposterously as it does in summarization is because the supernatural horror is kept within human scale. For example, in an early draft of the script, Remick’s character admitted that her burning desire to have a child was rooted not in maternal longing but in the politically-minded desire to project an image of a perfect family for the sake of her husband's career.

Though no longer explicitly stated in the film, there remains an air of neurotic vulnerability around Remick's character (and the Thorn marriage) that renders the introduction of the supernatural an almost secondary threat to the stability of the very rocky Thorn household.
Few horror films today seem to understand that without the firm establishment of something of value being placed at stake in the characters' circumstances, no amount of high-tech violence or CGI explicitness will make a film the viscerally frightening experience it needs to be. Gross, repugnant, or gory, perhaps, but not frightening.

I don't do windows

PERFORMANCES

Legitimacy has always been the elusive, snobbish scourge of horror films. Regardless of the quality, attach Joan Collins or American-International Pictures to it, and you’ve got yourself the cheapo half of a drive-in double-bill; bump up the budget, sign Hitchcock or some arthouse favorite as director, and you’re looking at possible Oscar bait. In the wake of The Exorcist and Jaws, the horror film was riding a crest of mainstream legitimacy, making it possible for a movie whose subject might otherwise have been considered best suited to Vincent Price and Beverly Garland to attract the likes of Gregory Peck and Lee Remick.

Having to go from no-nonsense pragmatism to possible insanity as a man who slowly comes to believe he must kill his child to save mankind, Oscar-winner Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird) has, arguably, the role in The Omen with the broadest character arc. But as it capitalizes on the same qualities of stolid authority and compassionate strength which typified much of his film work since the 1940s, it's really not that much of a stretch for the actor. Still, Peck's innate stability contrasts effectively with the regal fragility of Lee Remick, with whom he shares a tender and believable chemistry. 

The solid, rather old-fashioned performances of Peck and Remick are two of the main reasons why The Omen hasn’t been regulated to that slush pile I reserve for films I still adore but find impossible to take seriously anymore (Valley of the Dolls, The PoseidonAdventure, The Great Gatsby, The Towering Inferno). Both bring maturity, intelligence, and a considerable amount of old-Hollywood gravitas to their largely reactive, underwritten roles. A quality I'd not fully appreciated until I saw those blank slates Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles in the remake and realized how ludicrous the whole enterprise feels without actors capable of conveying an appropriate emotional maturity.

Yanks Lee Remick and Gregory Peck get solid UK support from Royal Shakespeare Academy alumni David Warner and Billie Whitelaw. Understated and natural, Warner's photojournalist gets my vote as the film's best performance, but Whitelaw (who grappled with Elizabeth Taylor in 1973s chilling Night Watch) can't help but evoke a few unintentional campy laughs in a role that posits her nefarious nanny as the anti-Mary Poppins.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
After the headline-making excesses of The Exorcist, audiences were no longer satisfied with run-of-the-mill violence and death in movies. Fanned by the '70s "disaster film" craze and the escalating depiction of violence on television (I remember 1975s The Legend of Lizzie Borden and 1972s The Night Stalker both being taken to task for their bloody content), America ghoulishly attended certain films in the express hope of being treated to ingeniously gruesome and spectacular deaths.

The Omen became one of the Top 5 boxoffice releases of 1976 largely due to word-of-mouth over its then-shocking violence and faint-inducing tension. While (mercifully) not on par with even the level of explicitness you can find in a PG film today, The Omen's talked-about setpieces still manage to pack a punch. In line with what I stated earlier about the ineffectiveness of horror without the establishment of human risk, one would miss the point of The Omen's success were one to assume its boxoffice success was due exclusively to the explicitness of its violence and the extravagance of its deaths. On the contrary, I believe the violence in The Omen (which is surprisingly bloodless) got under people's skin because, in the context of the film, the deaths had the emotional weight of real jeopardy and loss. And Jerry Goldsmith's magnificently ominous score didn't hurt either. 

I saw The Omen on opening night (Friday, June 25th at San Francisco's Coronet Theater) and while I can't vouch for anyone passing out, I can certainly attest to the many screams; the patrons who chose to sit out much of the film in the theater's lobby; and the fact that my younger sister (who really should have learned her lesson after The Exorcist and The Day of the Locust), at the occurrence of a particularly startling, now-iconic moment, burst into tears and had to be taken to the restroom to compose herself.

Love how the newspaper obligingly supplies a gruesome photograph of the impaled corpse on the front page.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Time, too many parodies, too many awful sequels, my own lapsed Catholicism, and the swiftness with which its plot points became camp pop cultural clichés has softened the impact of The Omen a bit for me over the years. But I’m forever grateful that I first learned of The Omen in the most ideal manner possible: through its ad campaign. 

1976 was a great year for film. So amazing that all of my attention was taken up with many of the more high-profile, hype-attendant releases of the day: Hitchcock’s Family Plot, the US/Russian collaboration on The Blue Bird, Streisand’s remake of A Star is Born, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, the remake of King Kong, Dustin Hoffman teaming with Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, and Michael York in the sci-fi adventure, Logan’s Run.

The Omen marked Oscar-winner Gregory Peck's return to
American films after a five-year absence

This was also the year that saw the release of The Man Who Fell to Earth; nostalgia-based films about both Clark Gable and WC Fields; Fellini’s Casanova; Liv Ullman’s return to Ingmar Bergman with Face to Face after her inauspicious shot at Hollywood stardom; Dustin Hoffman again in All The President’s Men; and the horror of a different kind supplied by Network. 

More traditional horror appeared with the release of Carrie, The Sentinel, and Burnt Offerings. All in the same year. And I haven't even brought up the heavily-anticipated features by high-profile, prestige directors like Altman, Bertolucci, Polanski, and Vincente Minnelli that were also released in this wonderfully overcrowded market. As I said, 1976 was a particularly amazing year to be a film fan.  

My mind and imagination were so wrapped up in those films that (strange as it seems) I had absolutely no foreknowledge of the forthcoming release of The Omen. What I do recall is riding the BART train to school one morning and being confronted by this massive billboard in the terminal…this completely stark, black sign with white lettering: “Good Morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world.” That was it! Nothing else. It stopped me in my tracks. I had no idea it was an ad for anything at all...it was just his creepy, eye-catching sign with nary a movie studio logo in the corner or anything.
In the ensuing weeks, more and more posters began showing up all over San Francisco. Each just as cryptic, just as foreboding: “If something frightening happens to you today, think about it,” “You Have Been Warned,” and inevitably, “This is your Final Warning.”

It felt as if an entire month had passed before the signs began to include the 20^th-Century-Fox logo in the corner, then eventually, written in blood red, the words, “The Omen,” with what I then thought were bowling ball finger-holes in the ”O” which of course I’d later discover were three sixes. 

By the time these teaser ads gave way to graphic art featuring a little boy casting the shadow of some kind of beast, ads divulging the cast (real, honest-to-god Hollywood movie stars!  Not straight-to-Drive-In nobodies!), I was like a fish on the hook. The movie I knew nothing about beforehand had become the film I HAD to see.

I was too young to remember the groundbreaking "Pray for Rosemary's Baby" ad campaign that launched the film that still remains my #1 favorite horror movie of all time, but I'm glad that the creative minds behind the marketing of The Omen gave me my own personal '70s version of the experience. Happily, once it was released, The Omen more than lived up to the hype and was quite the goosebumpy thrill ride I thereafter sought to re-experience time and time again that summer. Indeed, a good deal of the goodwill I currently harbor for this film (and the broad latitude I give its many faults) is in large part due to the pleasant memories I have of being young enough to have allowed myself to get so thoroughly caught up in the whole groundswell of excitement that accompanied the release of The Omen in 1976.

"On this night, Mr. Thorn, God has given you a son."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014

NIGHT WATCH 1973

Late in the summer of 1973, just around the time I and most of America were in the throes of a pop-cultural mania sparked by the powerhouse release of The Exorcist, the delectably tense drawing-room thriller Night Watch was sneaked into Bay Area theaters without benefit of fanfare or much in the way of advance publicity. 

This was at the height of Elizabeth Taylor’s and Richard Burton’s waning relevance as both movie stars and tabloid darlings, theirs having been a ten-year reign of bad publicity, bad behavior, and bad films together —the sublime Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? notwithstanding—culminating in a final tandem screen appearance in the 1973 two-part TV movie “Special Event” prophetically titled Divorce His – Divorce Hers (their 10-year marriage would end the following year). Like most everyone else at the time, I had grown pretty tired of hearing about the ubiquitous “Liz & Dick”—Hollywood’s answer to Orthrus, the mythological two-headed beast—whose conspicuous private life excesses had long overshadowed any merit I once accorded their professional talents. Off my personal radar for some time, I hadn't seen Elizabeth Taylor in a movie since 1968’s Secret Ceremony (which I loved), but when I saw the newspaper ad for Night Watch, I knew I HAD to see this movie.

I'm sorry, but how was it possible for anybody to resist this image of a windswept, heavily-mascaraed, Liz Taylor melodramatically clutching her head while lightning flashed overhead and two shadowy figures appear in spooky silhouette in the windows of a creepy Gothic mansion? OMG! This is marketing perfection! I practically camped out in front of the theater waiting for it to open.

Based on playwright Lucille Fletcher’s (Sorry, Wrong Number) moderately successful 1972 Broadway play starring Joan Hackett and future Taylor co-star Len Cariou ( A Little Night Music - 1977), Night Watch, on the surface, treads territory familiar to those acquainted with George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) or any of those “Is she crazy or is she being driven crazy?” thrillers like Midnight Lace (1960), Diabolique (1955), and Sudden Fear (1952).

Elizabeth Taylor as Ellen Wheeler

Laurence Harvey as John Wheeler

Billie Whitelaw as Sarah Cooke

Idle and wealthy Ellen Wheeler (Taylor), the neglected wife of loving but desperate-to-prove-he’s-not-living-off-her, workaholic husband, John (Harvey), is still, after eight years, haunted by memories of her first husband’s death: a violent automobile crash that also took the life of his 20-year-old mistress. After suffering a crippling breakdown, Ellen has since been plagued by nightly bouts of insomnia and subtly treated as a mentally fragile time-bomb by both her husband and her visiting girlhood friend, Sarah (Whitelaw). 

On one particularly stormy night vigil, with too little sleep and too many inner demons to battle (and there are a LOT of rainstorms in this London-based thriller), Ellen glances out the window to the abandoned house across the courtyard and sees, in a flash of lightning and flurry of storm-tossed shutters, the horrifying image of a man with a slashed throat propped grotesquely in a wing-back chair situated close to the window. When a police search of the old dark house fails to unearth even a trace of habitation, let alone evidence of foul play, John and Sarah’s concern for Ellen’s mental state intensifies. Meanwhile, Ellen herself grows increasingly convinced that what she saw was real.

I don’t tend to think of myself as someone drawn to a particular type of film, but truth be told, I confess to having a decided weakness for suspense thrillers. Unfortunately, the flip side of being a film fan any length of time is a growing over-familiarity with certain narrative tropes and plot devices. A too-steady diet of suspense thrillers can wreak havoc with the ability to find a film you can't second guess or stay one step ahead of. As movie genres go, the suspense thriller (and its attendant sub-categories: the psychological thriller, the mystery, the whodunit, the erotic thriller, the sci-fi chiller) is one of the last strongholds of cinema amazement. Thus I really relish it when, as is the case of Night Watch, a movie so narratively conventional on the surface can still have so many sinister surprises up its sleeve.

"That's what the watchers of the night are for. Things that in daytime are unknown and unremembered."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a lifelong insomniac familiar with the kind of subtle disquiet that can creep into the soul in the wee small hours of the morning, I have to say first and foremost I love the film’s title. To “Night Watch” is a perfect description of what it feels like to be wide awake when the vast majority of those around you are asleep. It feels like you’re standing metaphysical guard against your id playing havoc with all those subterranean thoughts and repressed terrors your ego holds so reliably in check during the daylight hours. Secondly, I found myself totally caught up in the way Night Watch uses the conventions of the Modern Gothic to construct a persuasively suspense-filled thriller built around the uncertainty of perception. This film is full of games of truth and illusion more deceptive (and far deadlier) than any of those employed by Albee’s George and Martha. 

"If the mind is obsessed enough with something it can actually produce an image on the retina. 
It has a name...it's called an 'eidetic image'."

PERFORMANCES

With but a few exceptions, most of my favorite actresses have tried their hand at the suspense thriller. Meryl Streep – Still of the Night; Audrey Hepburn – Wait Until Dark; Sandy Dennis – That Cold Day in the Park; Julie Christie – Don't Look Now; Jane Fonda – Klute; Lauren Bacall – The Fan; Susannah York – Images; Faye Dunaway - Eyes of Laura Mars; …even such unlikely candidates as Goldie Hawn (Deceived) and Twiggy (W). In this, her sole foray into the world of scream queens, daggers, and red herrings, Elizabeth Taylor is to the manner born. 

Movies like this tend to fall apart if the audience is unable to identify with or relate to a character's dilemma. Elizabeth Taylor, an actress of fragile appearance masking a steely core,  brings a considerable amount of verisimilitude to her character, making Ellen's deteriorating mental state both believable and compelling. She is given solid support by the talented, exclusively British, cast, but Taylor holds the whole thing together by making her terror seem debilitatingly real. Perhaps this is due to Taylor, an actress who has played characters created by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Carson McCullers; not being an individual we consider to be a stranger to hysterics.

Cracking Up

Reunited with her Butterfield 8 co-star, Laurence Harvey (only 45 years old at the time but exhibiting the wasting effects of the stomach cancer that would take his life only four months after the film’s release), Taylor is simply terrific as the high-strung witness to a possible murder no one believes really happened. Like late-career Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, late-career Elizabeth Taylor is often a matter of taste. Those having a problem with her impossible-to-ignore star persona, fluctuating weight gain (sometimes mid-film), designer caftans, and unique vocal style (she’ll insert pauses and stress emphasis in the most unexpected places) are not likely to be persuaded by her work here. Me, I think she’s the tops, and in Night Watch she gives a spellbindingly intense performance that's revealed to be even sharper and subtler upon repeat viewings.

The icy reserve of Billie Whitelaw (who would later terrify as the menacing nanny, 
Mrs. Baylock, in The Omen) contrasts effectively with Taylor's more earthy vulnerability.

Suspiciously conciliatory neighbor Mr. Appleby (Robert Lang) directs Ellen's attention
 to something in the window of the abandoned house next door.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

At first glance, Night Watch looks like a derivative catalog of hoary horror film clichés. And, well…it is. There’s the woman in distress; the incessant thunderstorms with well-timed lightning flashes; the old dark house; the ludicrously skeptical friends and annoyingly unhelpful police; the red herring assortment of suspicious characters with dubious motives; the non-stop entreaties to “calm down” or “get some sleep” - they’re all there.

Bill Dean as Inspector Walker

It’s only later, when you start to realize how much your expectations have been intentionally manipulated, does it begin to sink in how cleverly Night Watch works audience familiarity with the conventions of the genre to it its advantage. It's a tight, well-paced thriller that deftly builds its suspense by playing with the audience's mind as cleverly as it plays with that of Taylor's character. 

Things That Make You Go Hmmm
Why would someone be digging a hole in the garden in the middle of the night? Night Watch takes
fiendish delight in throwing traditional horror film elements into the mix of a suspense thriller.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I was 15 years old when I saw Night Watch, and even after the nerve-wracking horror of The Exorcist, the PG-rated Night Watch scared the hell out of me. Seeing it now some 30 years later, not only does it really hold up as a crackerjack thriller that plays fair with its surprises and twists (it’s one of those rare thrillers – like Hitchcock’s – that keeps paying dividends the more you see it), but there’s the added bonus of the whole '70s feel of  it. 

La Liz, not having an easy go of it

For those uninterested in taking either Elizabeth Taylor or the film seriously, Night Watch has much to recommend it in camp appeal for the terrifically glossy '70s look of the whole thing. There's Taylor at her 1973 diva best, photographed flatteringly and sporting a host of conceal/reveal '70s finery. There is much to take in visually, from big hairstyles, glam makeup, bulky jewelry, turtlenecks, positively enormous sideburns, wide ties, and even an ascot.
Though rarely referenced and seen by very few, Night Watch is one of my favorite thrillers. I'd recommend it to anyone with a fondness for the magnificent Elizabeth Taylor, or for anyone interested in atypical curios from this favored actress's career.

Happily, the Warners Archive Collection DVD has been beautifully remastered and is a huge improvement over the exceedingly dark, pan-and-scan VHS release from several years back. Scenes once taking place in near-total darkness (those who've seen the film know what I mean) are startlingly clear. Also, and I might be misremembering here, but I thought there was once a terrible George Barrie / Sammy Cahn theme song played over the end credits that has since been removed (hooray!). I see the song exists in the IMDB credits (title: "The Night Has Many Eyes") and I seem to recall it being sung by a Tom Jones sound-alike. In any event, my recollection of it was that it was 100% not the kind of MOR Sinatra-esque ditty you wanted to be played after the jolting finale of this thriller. It reminds me of Henry Mancini's equally mood-killing and inappropriate "love theme" from Wait Until Dark.

Night Watch reunited Taylor with her Butterfield 8 (1960) co-star, Laurence Harvey.

Note: I usually try to mix up the kind of films I write about each month, but in looking over my posts for December, I'm pretty sure the preponderance of thriller/suspense films represented this month (Carrie, Eye of the Cat, Night Watch) is in direct response to all that sugary, family-oriented programming one is subjected to on television during the holiday season. However, the highlighting of two Elizabeth Taylor films (A Little Night Music and Night Watch) is without a doubt an attempt on my part to divest myself of the memory of that Lindsay Lohan  "Liz & Dick" TV movie which aired on Lifetime last month. Boy, talk about your horror films! 

They cast WHO to portray me?

A clip from "Night Watch" 

Night Watch opened in Los Angeles on

 Wednesday, August 22, 1973 at the Pix Theater  on Hollywood Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012