THE FIRST TIME WAS ONLY A WARNING.

Satan’s son, Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor), has turned 13 and attends a military academy; people close to him begin to sense the kind of power he wields.

The second film maintains some of the scary atmosphere from the original (in this chapter Satan is represented by ravens, not dogs), but the filmmakers haven’t bothered with a script that feels fresh; William Holden is pretty much just another Gregory Peck.

We do however get to see several imaginative killings, with a particularly unpleasant drowning in an icy lake as the stand-out.

1978-U.S. 107 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Don Taylor. Screenplay: Stanley Mann, Mike Hodges. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Cast: William Holden (Richard Thorn), Lee Grant (Ann Thorn), Lew Ayres (Bill Atherton), Jonathan Scott-Taylor (Damien Thorn), Sylvia Sidney, Robert Foxworth… Lance Henriksen, Leo McKern. 

Trivia: Don Taylor replaced Hodges as director. Followed by The Final Conflict (1981).