Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978)

The Omen was one of those glossy, big-budget horror films, with Hollywood money and distribution, big-name stars, and a veneer of mainstream respectability, but it also had a darkly wicked sense of humor, mercilessly savage death scenes, great atmosphere, and a top-notch Jerry Goldsmith score. For Hollywood horror, it's pretty damn solid. It was a huge hit, and plans were quickly put into place by Omen producer Harvey Bernhard to churn out a couple more sequels, though only composer Goldsmith and actor Leo McKern (in a brief role) return from the first film.

Damien, like most sequels, can't match the impact of the original, and director Don Taylor is a less accomplished visual stylist than the first film's director, Richard Donner (who was too busy filming Superman to take on this one), but the sequel has a lot going for it, including a better overall pace (the first film drags a bit in the return-to-Rome stretch in the middle), a couple of over-the-top nutso death scenes, and a pretty good cast. Taylor, a character actor and journeyman filmmaker who also directed Escape from the Planet of the Apes (the third film in the series), the '70s adaptations of Tom Sawyer and The Island of Dr. Moreau, and a whole bunch of episodic television, was hired after Damien had already begun filming, replacing Mike Hodges (also the co-screenwriter), who was fired a few weeks into the shoot.

It's fascinating to think about what the sequel could have been under Hodges' direction. He wanted to focus on the monstrous power corporations were increasingly having over politics and everyday life while tying it into the resurgence of apocalyptic religious hysteria, and he liked to spend a long time planning and setting up shots, angering the producers, who felt he was breaking the schedule and the budget and deemphasizing the horror movie thrills. Taylor, on the other hand, had a reputation for staying on schedule, coming in under budget, and doing what the studios wanted. Hodges, who also directed the original Get Carter, The Terminal Man, Flash Gordon (replacing a fired Nicolas Roeg), Black Rainbow, and Croupier, would have made a much more stylish film, but I also like the visceral, nuts-and-bolts Taylor approach, and he manages to capture the occasional beautiful shot, like the ice skaters in the snow from above (unless that one was left over from the few weeks of Hodges).

Though this film was released two years after the first Omen, Damien takes place seven years later. Our Antichrist demon-child is now approaching thirteen and has been adopted by his Chicago-based uncle and step-aunt after the deaths of his parents in the first film, played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. The adoptive parents are played by another famous woman named Lee, Lee Grant, and the original choice for the Gregory Peck role, William Holden. Holden summarily dismissed the first Omen offer by saying he didn't want to be in a devil movie. After seeing how much money that film and its second-choice star Peck made, Holden changed his tune and decided that he very much wanted to be in a devil movie. Even so, it's not one of my favorite Holden performances. He does a competent job, but you can tell he's not feeling this one the way he's feeling The Wild Bunch or Network. Grant, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying herself, and her character has a bit more to work with than Remick had.

Our new tween Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) has an inexplicable British accent. Yes, Damien and his parents lived in England in the first film, but they were Americans (Peck played the newly appointed American ambassador to the UK), and he moved back to the States when he was still a small child after their deaths. Why the accent, guv'nor? Cor blimey! (I apologize to any and all UK readers.) The answer to this not-really-a-mystery is that Scott-Taylor is British. He was the actor the producers liked best, he looks a lot like the actor from the first movie, and he can do the Satanic stare almost as well as the little scamp from Omen number one, so let him have his British accent, is what I assume happened.

Damien has bounced from one exceedingly comfortable home, the child of a powerful political appointee, to another. His uncle Richard (Holden) is an executive at a multi-national corporation whose headquarters are in Chicago. Another exec, Paul (Robert Foxworth), has a gross but popular plan to control the world's food supply, with the only thing standing in his way the moral opposition of the company's aging CEO, Bill Atherton (Lew Ayres), playing perhaps the most farfetched character in film, the corporate CEO with ethics and a conscience.

Paul takes an unholy interest in Damien, as does the newest administrator, Sgt. Neff (Lance Henriksen), at the elite military academy for rich legacy kids that Damien and his cousin/brother Mark (Lucas Donat) attend. Damien, who'd mostly forgotten about being the Antichrist and was enjoying regular pre-teen life (or at least as regular as a spoiled rich kid at an elite military school who has weird occult powers sometimes can enjoy), relearns his Satanic purpose from Neff and Paul and begins to unleash hell, just in time for puberty. Unfortunately, Henriksen's role was scaled back by Taylor. Hodges was going to do a lot more with him.

You know what you're going to get if you've seen the first film. Someone learns that Damien is the Antichrist, tries to stop the Devil's plan or warn someone who can help, and gets crushed, devil-style. There are two surprisingly uninteresting death scenes in this film, but they are balanced out by two of the craziest, including a fantastic elevator scene. There's not much powerful opposition, narratively. Fighting the devil is a bit like the Mulkey Brothers trying to fight the Road Warriors. You will get the holy living fuck beat out of you, and it's not even close.

What can I say? This is a solid sequel. Not great, not terrible, legitimately entertaining, with a couple of thrilling moments. I didn't even mention the supporting roles for Allan Arbus, Sylvia Sidney, and, in his film debut, Meshach Taylor, as well as some fine work from some creepy crows, wrangled by the same animal trainer who handled the birds in The Birds. Is Damien: Omen II necessary? No, but what is? If you had a good time with the first one, you'll probably have a good time with this one. 

   

Revolt of the Zombies (Victor Halperin, 1936)

A bit creaky compared to director Victor Halperin's previous horror films, White Zombie and Supernatural, Revolt of the Zombies is nevertheless one of the most complicated scorned lover's revenge stories in the history of film. It gets off to a rough and awkward start, but after several mostly static scenes of people standing and talking in rooms, tents, and the great outdoors, the movie picks up quite a bit in its second half.

Beginning, as all love triangles do, in the Franco-Austrian frontier during World War I, Revolt of the Zombies opens with military linguist Armand (Dean Jagger) trying to convince his crusty superior that a Cambodian priest knows the secret of telepathic control and is able to turn the colonized Cambodian soldiers into fighting zombies or robots (the two terms are used interchangeably by the colonial Allied powers). No one's buying Armand's story, though his British friend and fellow Allied military mid-level bigwig, Clifford (Robert Noland), says Armand needs more confidence and killer instinct in his delivery and opines that between Armand's brains and his own ruthless determination, they'd make one powerful dude. We then briefly see those zombified Cambodians in action, taking bullets to the chest and continuing to fight, before returning to our multitude of scenes of people standing and talking. The bigwigs are finally convinced. The zombies/robots are real.

The priest is imprisoned by the colonial powers after he refuses to spill his zombie-making secrets to them, but he's stabbed to death in his cell by the sneaky General Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy, who makes the film's greatest faces), who then steals a parchment held by the priest containing a powerful secret, just not the zombification secret.

The colonial muckity-mucks, deciding zombified colonial armies are the key to winning the war and any future skirmishes, embark on an expedition to Angkor, Cambodia, to attempt to discover the elusive secret. Armand and Clifford are part of that expedition, along with French general Duval (George Cleveland) and his wisecracking daughter Claire (Dorothy Stone). Claire appears on the scene with a new hat, asking all the men how they like it. Armand immediately falls hard for Claire, but when Claire sees Clifford, it's hubba-hubba aw-oogah time. Claire accepts Armand's engagement proposal (things work fast in these old movies), but only to make Clifford jealous. Her nefarious plan works, the engagement with Armand is called off, and the engagement with Clifford is called on.

Standup guy Armand appears to take being dumped in one of the dirtiest ways possible relatively well. He's sad, but he tells Claire he'll always love her. Behind closed doors, he takes the down and dirty dumping less well, and when he discovers the ancient Cambodian telepathic zombification trick, standup guy Armand decides his days of being a standup guy are over. It's revenge time, MFers. He's going to zombie up nearly everyone, except for an older mentor figure and Claire, and he's going to snatch Claire back from that damn limey Clifford whether Claire likes it or not, with the help of his zombie horde. (She likes it not.) Damn, Armand. You didn't have to go so hard, but you did.

As I said earlier, the first half of the movie is mostly exposition scenes, with lots of standing (and occasional sitting at desks). It's a bit of a snooze, though we get some accidental art-film ellipses from the absence of several plot-developing connecting scenes that were clearly cut to get this movie on a double feature bill. There was likely even more exposition in this damn thing in its complete, uncut form.

Starting with the scene where Armand sneakily follows a Cambodian man through a waist-deep body of water to a hidden temple, the movie really kicks in, and the second half is pretty enjoyable. Armand turns from milquetoast goody two shoes to megalomaniac, and he wears this transformation well. Halperin sneakily reuses the closeup on Bela Lugosi's eyes from his previous White Zombie whenever Armand goes into telepathic mode (always fun to see), and the exciting conclusion lives up to its title.

White Zombie and Supernatural have much more atmosphere and style, and Revolt of the Zombies is clearly more a job of work for Halperin, but it has its moments. I can't completely dismiss it, though I'd only recommend it to the diehards who need to see everything.