Damien: Omen II, is a 1978 sequel to the iconic horror film The Omen and the second film in The Omen series. Set seven years after the first film, it was directed by Don Taylor and featured an all-star cast, including William Holden, Lee Grant, Sylvia Sidney, Lew Ayres, Robert Foxworth, and Jonathan Scott-Taylor. The film was followed by a third installment, Omen III: The Final Conflict, in 1981.
Plot
A week after the burial of Robert Thorn and his wife after their horrific deaths, Carl Bugenhagen (Leo McKern) races through the streets of Jezreel to meet his friend Michael Morgan. He tells his friend shocking news, that he is the only one alive to know that Robert Thorn's son Damien is the Antichrist. Bugenhagen shows him several news-papers, stating Damien is now living in Chicago with his father's brother Richard Thorn (William Holden). Also telling him how Robert died trying to kill Damien, he wants Morgan to deliver a box to Richard, warning him of the danger and how to kill Damien. Still unconvinced, Bugenhagen takes him to the ruins of Tel Megiddo to show him the proof he needs.
Within the ruins, the two first uncover a statue, depicting the Whore of Babylon, next to it is what they call Yigael's Wall. It supposedly depicts the events showing the rise and fall of the Antichrist. On one painting, the Antichrist depicted has the face of Damien. Morgan realizes the truth, but then the tunnel leading there collapses. Soon Bugenhagen and Morgan are buried alive as the sand sinks in and the ruins fall all around them. A crow watches as this occurs.
Seven years later, Damien Thorn is now twelve years old and dwelling with his uncle Richard Thorn, a wealthy industrialist, his uncle's second wife, Ann, and Richard's son from his first marriage, Mark. Damien and Mark are both enrolled in a military academy, but Damien is not highly regarded by their Aunt Marion. She even threatens to cut Richard off from her inheritance unless Damien is moved to an other school, calling him a bad influence on Mark. When she goes to bed a crow stares at her and she has a fatal heart attack.
Richard, as president of Thorn Industries, is making tentative moves to expand its operation into agriculture. However, this is all part of the plan to procure Damien with his ten kingdoms on Earth, since Paul Buher (Robert Foxworth), a secret acolyte of Damien, is making sure Thorn Industries buys the land they plant crops in. Damien has an other acolyte; his commander, Sergeant Daniel Neff (Lance Henriksen), who helps Damien out at the Academy. He warns the boy not to arouse any attention until the right moment, after two incidents in which he nearly kills a classmate by looking at him and then answering dozens of historic date questions with no effort. After these events, Damien discovers his true identity (finding the number 666 scarred onto his scalp). Upon this discovery, Damien flees the Academy grounds in a terrified panic.
One of Richard's friends, Doctor Charles Warren, is helping to procure some of the relics buried in the Tel Meggido ruins for the Thorn Museum. He also introduces them to a journalist friend, Joan Hart, who is investigating the death of Bugenhagen. She warns Richard after having seen the Yigael's Wall, but he refuses to listen. She then goes to meet Damien and is horrified to see that his face is identical to the painting on Yigael's Wall. She flees but gets stuck on a deserted high way. There she is attacked by the crow and it pecks her eyes out. She ends up blindly wandering into the road and is hit by an truck.
Winter comes and at Mark's birthday celebration Buher makes his presence known to Damien. He also becomes angry with a Thorn associate Bill Atherton, who calls Buher's agriculture plan immoral and inhumane. The next day, Atherton falls through the ice during a hockey game and drowns when the current pulls him out of the reach of help. Richard and Anne leave on vacation, which allows Buher time to initiate the plan without Richard's consent.
Another Thorn Industries associate, David Pasarian, learns that three people have been killed in three of the ten locales after they refused to sell their land. Pasarian is unaware that Buher is the culprit, but alerts Richard and brings him home early. The next day, while inspecting chemical machinery, the machine explodes. Pasarian and his assistant suffocate and die from the toxic fumes after the machine malfunctions and refuses to deactivate. Damien and his class, at the plant on a field trip, are mildly injured by the fumes.
The hospital doctor finds that all of the boys have suffered some degree of poisoning except for Damien. Upon further blood testing, the doctor finds that Damien has the blood cell structure of a jackal. When he attempts to share his finding, he is killed when the elevator mysteriously malfunctions, and he is severed in half by the collapsing suspension cables.
Charles Warren comes to Richard, telling him he found the box that was to be delivered to him and read the contents. It holds the Seven Daggers of Meggido and the notes telling how Damien is the Antichrist. Charles has become obsessed, pleading that the deaths that have happened (events of the first film) are not coincidental and that neither are the more recent deaths among them. He warns Richard to come to New York and see Yigael's Wall but Richard angrily refuses and throws him out. Mark hears the entire conversation.
The next day Richard confronts Anne with the letter, but she convinces him the letter is wrong. Mark confronts Damien with the truth, who reluctantly admits it. Mark runs in terror, as Damien confesses he is the son of the Devil, who was cast out, "but is alive" in him. Damien, distraught by Mark's newly found fear of him, tries to convince Mark that he truly cares for him and begs Mark to allow Damien to protect him, but Mark refuses. Damien swiftly kills Mark with a brain aneurysm, which the doctors can't detect. Initially, Damien severely regrets his decision to kill Mark, but soon realizes that it was necessary in order for him to continue on his path.
This death finally pushes Richard over the edge, and he follows Warren to New York. Richard finds him, crazed and locked in the back room of a church. By force he shows Richard Yigael's Wall, in a cargo carrier in the train yard. Richard sees this image and finally realizes that Damien is the Antichrist that Bugenhagen and the prophecy foretold. Immediately, a train car malfunctions and collides with the carrier containing Richard and the Wall. Though Richard is merely shaken, Charles is killed in the resultant crash.
Just as Damien celebrates his freshman graduation at the academy, Richard returns to Chicago. He orders his driver, Murray, to collect Damien and bring him to the museum, while Ann and Richard hail a cab to the museum. Damien becomes suspicious.
On the way, Richard explains to Ann that Damien is, in fact, the Antichrist and that the Daggers of Meggido must be found from Charles' package at the museum, as they are the only weapons which can destroy Damien. After a brief argument with Ann denouncing Richard's desire to kill Damien (which Damien witnesses as he stands without the office), they find the daggers but Ann uses them to kill Richard while proclaiming herself also a protector of Damien's. Almost instantly, the office boiler explodes and Ann staggers about, engulfed in flames.
Ann fulfills her purpose as the Whore of Babylon. Damien exits the museum, which is then destroyed off screen by the fire. Damien's driver pulls up just as the fire department arrives to combat the flames. The film ends with Damien the heir to millions and in control of a powerful multi-governmental corporation. With the only people still alive who know the truth are his acolytes, Damien's rise to power as the Antichrist then begins.
Crew & Cast
David Seltzer, who wrote the first film's screen-play, was asked by the producers to write the second. Seltzer refused as he had no interest in writing sequels. Years later, Seltzer commentated that had he written the story for the second Omen, he would have set it the day after the first movie, with Damien a child living in The White House. With Seltzer turning down Omen II, producer Harvey Bernhard duly outlined the story himself, and Stanley Mann was hired to write the screenplay.
After Bernhard had finished writing the story outline and was given the green light to start the production, the first person he contacted was Jerry Goldsmith because of the composer's busy schedule. Bernhard also felt that Goldsmith's music for The Omen was the highest point of that movie, and that without Goldsmith's music, the sequel would not be successful. Goldsmith's Omen II score uses similar motifs to his original Omen score, but for the most part, Goldsmith avoided re-using the same musical cues. In fact, the first movie's famous "Ave Satani" theme is used only partially, just before the closing credits begin. Goldsmith composed a largely different main title theme for Omen II, albeit one that utilises Latin phrases as "Ave Satani" had done. Goldsmith's Omen II score allows eerie choral effects and unusual electronic sound designs to take precedence over the piano and gothic chanting.
Richard Donner, director of the first Omen movie, was not available to direct the second, as he was busy working on Superman. British film director Mike Hodges was hired to helm the movie. During production, the producers believed that Hodges' methods were too slow, and so they fired him and replaced him with Don Taylor, who had a reputation for finishing films on time and under budget. However, the few scenes Hodges directed (some of the footage at the factory and at the military academy, all of the early archaeology scenes, and the dinner where Aunt Marion shows her concern about Damien) remained in the completed film, for which Hodges retains a story credit. In recent interviews, Hodges has commented sanguinely on his experiences working on Omen II.
William Holden was the original choice to star as Robert Thorn in the first Omen, but turned it down as he did not want to star in a picture about the devil. Gregory Peck was selected as his replacement. The Omen went on to become a huge hit and Holden made sure he did not turn down the part of Richard Thorn in the sequel. Lee Grant was a fan of the first Omen and accepted enthusiastically the role of Ann Thorn.
Ray Berwick (1914 - 1990) trained and handled the crows used for several scenes in the film. Live birds and a crow-puppet were used for the attack on photojournalist Joan Hart. Berwick also trained the avian actors in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).
Locations
The movie was set in Chicago and was largely filmed in downtown Chicago and on the campus of Lake Forest Academy (formerly the Armour Estate) in Lake Forest, Illinois. The Thorn Mansion is the Lake Forest Academy; all exteriors had to be shot in the back garden of the academy/estate because the school had erected a very modern structure in front of the old estate.
The Academy scenes were filmed at the Geneva Lake campus of Northwestern Military and Naval Academy. The cadets at the military academy were real students at the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin military academy where the film was shot. The skating scene was filmed on Catfish Lake in Eagle River, Wisconsin using local children as the skaters. The local paramedics were standing by in case any of the children fell through the ice. The "Thorn Industries" building was actually Chicago's city hall.
Another scene took place at Graceland Cemetery. One scene required Mr. Thorn to travel to New York City to meet a character by railroad tracks. In New York City, though, there are no railroad tracks that deliver freight into the city. The background scene did not look like New York City, it was Downtown Chicago because you could see the Chicago Board of Trade or CBOT tower and the lower floors of the Willis Tower. Mr. Thorn flies out Meigs Field in a Learjet but in the movie, we do not see the plane take off. Meigs Field was decommissioned in 2005, by Mayor Richard M. Daley. The "possessed" diesel switcher at Thorns' supposedly New York meeting with Charles belonged to the now long defunct Rock Island railroad. The Rock Island did not reach New York and was a Chicago based railway.
Deaths
| Character |
Cause of death |
| Carl Bugenhagen and Michael Morgan |
Buried alive in sand and debris at an old ruin at the start of the film |
| Aunt Marion |
Has a heart attack while trying to shoo away the Satanic crow |
| Joan Hart |
Hit by a truck after having her eyes plucked out by the crow |
| Bill Atherton |
Falls through the ice and drowns (or freezes) to death |
| David Pasarian and his assistant |
Gassed by poisonous fumes during a tour by cadets from Damien's military school |
| Dr William Kane |
Sliced in half by a falling elevator cable |
| Mark Thorn |
Damien causes an aneurysm in Mark's brain to rupture as Mark refuses to join him |
| Dr. Charles Warren |
Crushed between train cars |
| Richard Thorn |
Stabbed by Ann with the daggers he tried to kill Damien with. |
| Ann Thorn |
Set on fire when Damien destroys the boiler room. Was depicted as The Whore of Babylon due to Ann's uncomfortable nature when the whore was described to her and Richard by Charles Warren earlier in the film in a slide presentation. |
Cast
- William Holden ... Richard Thorn
- Lee Grant ... Ann Thorn
- Jonathan Scott-Taylor ... Damien Thorn
- John J. Newcombe...Teddy
- Lucas Donat...Mark Thorn
- Leo McKern...Carl Bugenhagen (uncredited)
- Robert Foxworth ... Paul Buher
- Nicholas Pryor ... Dr. Charles Warren
- Sylvia Sidney ... Aunt Marion
- Lew Ayres ... Bill Atherton
- Lance Henriksen ... Master Sergeant Daniel Neff
- Elizabeth Shephard ... Joan Hart
- Meshach Taylor ... Dr. Kane
- Allan Arbus ... Pasarian
- Fritz Ford ... Murray
- John Charles Burns ... Butler
- Paul Cook ... Colonel
- Diane Daniels ... Jane
- Robert E. Ingham ... Teacher
- William B. Fosser ... Minister
- Corney Morgan ... Greenhouse Technician
- Russell P. Delia ... Truck Driver
- Judith Dowd ... Maid
- Thomas O. Erhart Jr. ... Sergeant #1
- Sorin Serene Pricopie ... Pasarian's Assistant
- Robert J. Jones Jr. ... Tour Guide
- Rusdi Lane ... Jim Gardner
- Charles Mountain ... Burial Priest
- Cornelia Sanders ... Young Girl
- Felix Shuman ... Dr. Fiedler
- James Spinks ... Technician #1
- Owen Sullivan ... Byron
- William J. Whelehan ... Security Guard
- Ian Hendry ... Michael (uncredited)
- Gus Kaprales ... Limo Driver (uncredited)
Reaction
The film received mixed reviews.[citation needed] In comparison to the serious tone of the original, there were moments during the acclaimed death scenes (including the famous sequence in which a woman's eyes are pecked out by a raven and she walks blind onto a road only to be hit by a truck) which were unintentionally comical.[citation needed] The music by Jerry Goldsmith was again praised for its spooky build-up of suspense.[citation needed]
Joseph Howard wrote the novelization of Damien: Omen II. The novel was a best-seller, as David Seltzer's novelization of the first movie had been.[citation needed]
DVD release
The film was released as part of The Omen Quadrilogy set in the US and UK in 2000, and therefore not available separately until 2005. In 2006, to coincide with the DVD release of the remake of the original film, The Omen and its sequels were released individually and together in an ultimate Pentalogy boxset digitally remastered and with more bonus features. Damien: Omen II included two new featurettes, plus the previous DVD's commentary.
See also
External links
