Damien, Father (Damien De Veuster), 1840-89, Belgian missionary priest and saint, originally named Jozef De Veuster. He went to Hawaii (1864) as a Picpus Father (Father of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary). He was ordained (1864) in Honolulu and worked among the islanders for several years. In 1873, at his request, he was sent to the lepers' colony on Molokai, where he labored until his death from leprosy. Attention was called to Father Damien by a tract in his defense by R. L. Stevenson, An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde, addressed to a minister who had made some slanderous insinuations against Father Damien shortly after his death. In 1936 his body was removed in great state from Molokai to Antwerp. He was canonized in 2009.

orig. Joseph de Veuster

(born Jan. 3, 1840, Tremelo, Belg.—died April 15, 1889, Molokai, Hawaii) Belgian priest. After training at the College of Braine-le-Comte, he joined the Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1858. He went as a missionary to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands in 1863 and was ordained there in 1864. In 1873 he volunteered to take charge of the leper colony on Molokai Island. There he served as both physician and priest, dramatically improving living conditions and building two orphanages. He contracted leprosy himself in 1884 but refused to leave his post, and he died at Molokai five years later.

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orig. Joseph de Veuster

(born Jan. 3, 1840, Tremelo, Belg.—died April 15, 1889, Molokai, Hawaii) Belgian priest. After training at the College of Braine-le-Comte, he joined the Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1858. He went as a missionary to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands in 1863 and was ordained there in 1864. In 1873 he volunteered to take charge of the leper colony on Molokai Island. There he served as both physician and priest, dramatically improving living conditions and building two orphanages. He contracted leprosy himself in 1884 but refused to leave his post, and he died at Molokai five years later.

Learn more about Damien, Father with a free trial on Britannica.com.

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.

• Tagline: The First Time Was Only A Warning.

Plot

Damien Thorn is now 13 and living 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; meanwhile, Thorn Industries is making tentative moves to expand its operations into Third World agriculture.

The young Damien doesn't understand his true potential, but others are beginning to suspect that he is not the sweet young boy that he appears to be. However, when he discovers his true identity, he is initially upset at being a vehicle for the Antichrist, knowing there is nothing he can do to circumvent his destiny (and killing the brother he loves in the process). Nevertheless, within his life there are many people working to help him ascend to his rightful place as the Antichrist, but at the same time, lone journalists, doctors, scientists and friends all try to stop him and warn his foster parents. Those who attempt to find the truth about Damien, and who try to stop him, are invariably killed in gruesome ways.

The Seven Sacred Daggers of Megiddo from the first film (reputedly the only weapons able to kill the Anti-Christ, according to the series' interior logic) make a reappearance.

Crew & Cast

David Seltzer, who wrote the first film's screenplay, was asked by the producers to write the second. Seltzer refused as he had no interest in writing sequels. Years later, Seltzer commented 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 Santani" 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 Sears Tower. Mr. Thorn flies out Meigs Field in a Learjet but in the movie, we do not see the plane takeoff. 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	Bisected by falling elevator cable.
Mark Thorn	Damien causes an aneurysm in Mark's brain as Mark refuses to join him
Dr. Charles Warren	Impaled 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. 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. The music by Jerry Goldsmith was again praised for its spooky build-up of suspense.

Joseph Howard wrote the novelisation of Damien: Omen II. The novel was a best-seller, as David Seltzer's novelisation of the first movie had been.

DVD release

The film was released as part of The Omen Quadology 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 Pentology boxset digitally remastered and with more bonus features. Damien: Omen II included two new featurettes, plus the previous DVD's commentary.

See also

• List of fiction set in Chicago

External links

• interview with Mike Hodges