Damien, now roughly 13, lives with his aunt and uncle and attends a military academy where he discovers his true identity as heir to the Throne of Darkness. Who better to teach him the ancient arts of war and evil than a young Lance Henriksen, as a devil-worshipping military instructor? Meanwhile, the Thorn Company, owned by his uncle, faces some kind of moral dilemma over selling food to starving Africans. Somehow the two plots intertwine, and innocent, God-fearing people end up dying in horrible accidents. The film is notable mostly for its deaths, all of which are gruesome and highly entertaining. My favorite death, the one I recall vividly from childhood peeks at the novelization that somehow made its way into our home, that continues to freak me out to the very core, is when an old man playing hockey on a frozen river breaks through and gets sucked along under the ice as his friends desperately try to extract him. The image of the horrified man pounding in utter futility against the thick ice has literally haunted me for decades, but then, I'm such a pussy, Tevye's dream in Fiddler on the Roof still makes me howl with terror (in Yiddish, no less). Besides the deaths, there's not a lot of logic or tension. The film is at heart an elaborate retread of The Omen, with William Holden subbing for Gregory Peck as the skeptic who comes to believe that Damien is Satan and must be killed. A climactic twist involving Damien's aunt (played by Lee Grant) doesn't add much, since Damien is clearly untouchable, so we never seriously fear for his life. And you don't kill off your most interesting character unless you absolutely have to. The acting's pretty good, especially William Holden as Damien's uncle, Robert Thorn. The kid who plays Damien does a nice job of portraying both the conflict of being the Evil One in a human body with beloved friends and family dropping like flies, and the pure ecstasy he feels as his supernatural powers increase. The usual gang of vaguely familiar and uniformly ugly 70s actors round out the cast.
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