Damien: Omen 2 (1978)

Posted on Jul 31, 2002 under Horror |

Directed by Don Taylor
Written by Stanley Mann and Michael Hodges
Starring
- William Holden
- Lee Grant
- Jonathan Scott-Taylor
- Robert Foxworth
- Nicholas Pryor

Once again, the law of diminishing returns rears its annoying head; even the Lord of Darkness himself is not immune, apparently (or at least his progeny). And while the first Omen at least gave us enough individually cool scenes to occasionally distract us from the fact that not a bit of it made any sense, this second outing is too tired, too lacking in good nickels left to spend, to camouflage the basic problem inherited from the original: The Son of Satan, the Antichrist himself, spends too much time not being terribly evil.

Sadly, it’s not the worst haircut Damien wears in this movie.

We open with archaeologist/exorcist Brugenhagen (the late lamented Leo McKern), a scant week after the events of the first movie, trying to convince a colleague to travel to America and convince Damien Thorn’s uncle who’s taken him in, Richard (William Holden), to finish what Gregory Peck bungled the first time around and off the infernal brat. (We’ve discarded the “shocker” ending of the first film, that Damien had been taken in by his father’s friend who just happens to be President of the United States. Apparently “ultimate evil in the White House” was too much of an obvious punchline to base a movie around. [Comparisons to The Devil's Advocate are indeed appropriate.]) as proof, Brugenhagen shows him the paintings on a buried wall at the excavation site, painted by a mad medieval evangelist who foresaw the life of the Antichrist, and to whom we can credit much of the extra-scriptural nonsense with which they supplement the odd verse from the Book of Revelation all through the movie. Why, this monk was so mad, he painted murals of the life of Satan’s Son all over the walls in a photo-realistic style completely unlike the artists of his day, to the point that young Damien can easily be recognized! Wow! Unfortunately, the forces of EE-vil don’t want Brugenhagen’s next set of sacred daggers to make it into Thorn’s hands (is there a Blessed Vending Machine dispensing these things by the gross somewhere in the Holy Land?), and causes a cave-in, burying the two men for a good many years.

Seven years, to be precise, by which time Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) is just entering his teen years. He’s pretty much the adopted son of Richard and Ann (Lee Grant) Thorn and surrogate brother to their son Mark (Lucas Donat), and both boys are doing well in military academy. Damien, in fact, seems to be just a normal kid, except for those hoity British features and accent (boy, how American is that?). Which makes it all the more comical when old biddy Aunt Marion (Sylvia Sidney) dotes on Mark but can’t stand Damien, declaiming him to the Thorns as an evil influence. Sure, I can accept that, provided we’re using a definition of “evil” completely devoid of any evil acts.

**“You have to play ‘pull my finger’ after every meal, and you accuse Damien of being evil?!”**

Something sure doesn’t like her accusations, though, because in the middle of the night (like all designated victims, she sleeps with her windows wiiiiiiiiide open), she awakens to find — a crow! Sitting at the end of her bed! (At this point — and every time we see a crow throughout the movie, in fact — the musical score starts belching. Seriously.) She immediately has a very painful-looking heart attack and dies, which is unsurprising, since it’s a well-known fact that Satan is the fourth leading cause of heart disease in the United States.

In the meantime, other ominous forces are afoot. For one thing, Charles (Nicholas Pryor), curator of the Thorn Museum, brings word that they’re near the completion of excavating the site where Brugenhagen met his sandy end, and they’ll be bringing a heapload of artifacts over in the near future (in casual defiance of every Israeli Antiquities statute, apparently). Charles’ friend, reporter girl Joan (Elizabeth Shepherd), was on hand when the wall was excavated, and saw that the mural contained not only a picture-perfect rendering of Damien at the time his parents were killed, but a convenient second rendering of him as portrayed by a different actor in the present. She decides that the best way to warn Richard Thorn that his nephew is the Antichrist is to accost him on the street and blabber insane-sounding nonsense until he has her physically separated from him. (Those international reporters, boy, they sure know all the ins and outs.) And as her punishment, she drives down a country road and gets — an ominous flat tire! (Because it’s a well-known fact that Satan is the third leading cause of accidents.. oh, did I already use that joke?) And when she gets out of the car — there’s a crow on the hood! (Complete with belching soundtrack.) The crow proceeds to peck out her eyes — that’s right, a one-pound bird overpowers a fullgrown woman rather easily — and then she stumbles into the path of a truck.

Lance Henriksen, near the beginning of his career as a designated hardass.

And, as usual, there are ominous members of some shadowy cult who have insinuated themselves into Damien’s life to look after him. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by giving them away; it’s not like it takes too many braincells to spot them coming from afar-off, even without shaving their scalps and looking for 666 emblems. There’s Paul (Robert Foxworth, last seen around these parts chasing the worst excuse for an invisible villain ever), up-and-coming VP at Thorn Industries, who wants to move the company toward buying up poorly-used agricultural land in third-world countries and developing it for adequate food production (gasp! how nefarious of him!). And there’s Sergeant Neff (Lance Henriksen), the new platoon officer at Damien and Mark’s military academy. Frankly, having all of these people surrounding Damien, each with an agenda relating to Damien’s supposedly Satanic destiny — which hasn’t made an appearance yet — makes this movie seem like some kind of alternate-universe version of The Life of Brian.

But since this movie actually has Damien’s name in the title, well, we should expect things to get kicked up a notch, right? Ir’s Sergeant Neff who finally points Damien to the Book of Revelation, telling him that chapter 13 is basically Damien’s own little how-to manual. Interestingly — and disappointingly — enough, we get to hear little bits of voiceover as Damien reads, quoting the expected ominous bits from the chapter, freely mixed with little bits of made-up prophecy (as in, not to be found in the Bible) as if it were part and parcel of the chapter. I can see why they had to do it, because frankly, you couldn’t recognize Damien as the Antichrist if you just compared him to the description in Revelation, and they had to justify the story. But come on! Am I the only one that thinks it’s sad that the producers were counting on their audience to only be vaguely familiar with the sacred text of the religion that most of them profess?

“I never wanted to be the Antichrist! I always wanted to be… a lumberjack!”

And how does Damien react to the revelation in Revelation? In probably the most bungled single aspect of the movie, he rushes out to the lakeshore and screams, “Why me?!” Now this, this could have been an interesting movie: An otherwise unremarkable young man, faced with overwhelming evidence that he will inevitably become evil incarnate. Unfortunately, this is not the movie we get.

Instead, by the scene immediately following, Damien’s completely okay with his Antichristhood, and now patiently waits for his moustache to grow so he can twirl it, and his voice to change so he can “Mwa ha hah” without an embarrassing squeak.

And the mysterious deaths continue apace; fortunately, the whole crow motif is abandoned about halfway through. (I guess someone realized that birds that eat roadkill don’t quite fill the shoes of the huge black mastiffs that roamed through the first one.) That doesn’t make them any less ridiculous usually (although the one in which Lew Ayres is falls through a hole in the ice and passes beneath frantic people’s feet, banging ineffectually, is one that sticks in the memory); several had no reason to be there except to fill a quota. (Gotta love watching the elevator death of a young Meschach Taylor as the doctor who accidentally discovers that Damien’s cell structure is identical to that of jackals…)

Ah, the perks of diabolical lineage.

The “shock” ending is, well… Let’s just say that the producers assumed the general intelligence of their audience to be on a level with their theological perception, because the clues to the “twist” couldn’t have been more obvious even if everyone had loudly cleared their throats before saying something significant.

At best, this movie’s a paler copy of an original which was no great shakes to begin with; the only truly sparkling change here is that at least, this time, we don’t have to see Damien exercise his awesome diabolical influence over captive zoo animals.