DAMIEN: OMEN II

I remember when I first saw THE OMEN. It was a bunch of hooey crap, but I loved it. I totally bought into its histrionic "This Is the End of The World" style. I loved that they got an actor as well-known as Gregory Peck to be in it. I had a great time.  It goes without saying that the sequel would be preposterous junk, but I couldn’t resist. So in honor of the impending, and totally unnecessary remake of THE OMEN, I decided to revisit a classically bad horror movie, DAMIEN: OMEN II.

This movie, like the original, also has a well-known actor in it: William Holden. I'm guessing they pay a lot of money to these actors to add legitimacy to what is otherwise a ridiculous film.  Now we find Damien, the son of the Devil, living in the care of Holden, the brother of the man who was his father in the first film.  Now his foster father is a super super rich tycoon who owns some vast corporation that does…well, lots of things...it's just a corporation, okay? Anyway, Damien is sent off to Military Academy with his cousin.

In the meantime, we find that Damien's face is on some ancient painting which supposedly fortold the coming of Satan and the destruction of the Earth. William Holden's character ends up dealing with an uppity vice-president who wants to buy up lands in foreign countries. It's a pretty convoluted plot, so don't worry about it.

Anyways, soon people start to suspect something is weird with Damien and those who do start to die one by one.  Everytime they die, preposterously over-the-top opera music came on...its effect is to make you laugh rather than be scared. Damien, who actually discovers his true identity in this movie, is helped along by various people placed to assist him get ahead. It's kind of fun finding out who these people are as the movie progresses, but the big problem with the movie is that there is hardly any plot! The only thing which kept me watching it was to see more people die.

This is where we come to the plus of the movie: it's got some great deaths. My favorite involved a falling glass elevator...although there's a great one where a guy is trapped under ice while people playing hockey over him.  The movie is just basically about people dying one by one, watching a rich family waste a lot of money, and listening to weird opera music.

In sum, the movie pretty much bites, but it has a few pluses. One of them is certainly NOT the ending, which is lame and abrupt, unlike the great ending of the first film. The energy is lost from the first film and in the end the movie gets a big "whatever."

Rating: ** (out of a possible 4)