The Underworld has been a busy place, once again, with excessive work commitments, another theatre adjudication to write and some unfortunate health issues (which, hopefully, will be on the road to resolution in the next 48 hours!) I tried to frontload the month with three posts in swift succession, hoping I could knock out another one soon after, but it just didn’t happen. So anyway, enough about me!
It’s October and time to scare up a post or two about something creepy and unsettling. (Don’t worry. This is not a post about Tom Cruise.) 
One of my favorite guilty pleasure horror movies is 1978’s Damien: Omen II. A sequel to the blockbuster hit The Omen (which starred Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as parents to a toddler who is The Antichrist), this movie takes place about seven years later and stars William Holden and an Underworld fave, Miss Lee Grant. The cuddly little monster from the first film has grown up a bit into early teenage Jonathan Scott-Taylor and resides with the late Peck’s brother Holden, Holden’s wife Grant and his son Lucas Donat. 
A prologue shows one of the first film’s stars (Leo McKern) frantically racing to see something called Yigael’s Wall at an archeological
dig, the wall supposedly depicting the face of The Antichrist at various developmental stages. When he and his associate witness the toddler Damien’s visage on the artifact, they are involved in a sand-riddled cave in before they can share what they know. The story then picks up at Holden’s estate, a beautifully appointed mansion that, in this film, is also a winter wonderland.
There for a visit is Holden’s Aunt Marion, the crotchety Sylvia Sidney, whose every raspy breath and craggy line reading is a treasure to behold.
She (wisely) doesn’t trust Scott-Taylor at all and dislikes the effect he has on her beloved nephew Donat. In a hilarious dinner table scene, she and Grant have an enmity that is palpable and she swiftly tosses Grant back into her place. Sadly, this gorgeous bit of rivalry is cut short when Sidney receives a visit in the night from an ominous black crow! Why, why, WHY did the writer have to remove the crusty and fretful Sidney from the storyline so soon?! I want more animosity and bickering from Grant and her… Note the way a shiny metal bird in the middle of the table forshadows the coming of the crow!
People can go on all they want to about the luxury and glamour of tumbled marble and slate flooring. In The Underworld, the lanai is paved with tiles bearing a pattern of the deceased, rigid corpse of Aunt Marion (Sidney), enjoying her eternal rest. This way, her scarlet lipstick etched face is never too far out of reach.
Scott-Taylor, though he has no clue at this stage that he is evil, has minions all over the place who are aiding him slyly in assuring that he will have the money and means
to rule America and then the world. At the military school that he and Donat attend, the commanding sergeant Lance Henrikson takes special interest in him and attempts to prep him for his sordid future. (This entire story thread has an unintentional -??- homoerotic bent to it. Because of the secrecy and menace of the situation, it always looks like Henrikson is one step away from trying to coerce Scott-Taylor into spending seven minutes in heaven with him!) 
At Holden’s multimillion-dollar chemical company, a lot of drama is taking place as well, with old guard senior manager Lew Ayres battling the ambitious
Robert Foxworth over the direction of things. In a memorable scene, Ayres pays the price for not going along with Foxworth’s plans when he falls beneath the ice of a partially frozen lake. His panic-stricken body is shown floating under the ice as skaters playing hockey frantically try to break it open and let him out. This is a gripping scene, made more meaningful by Holden’s panic and remorse. There is foreshadowing here, too, as Foxworth talks about putting his project "on ice" and Donat's birthday cake is in the form of a lake that must be cut into.
Then there’s Elizabeth Shephard, a crisp, British journalist (in the reddest coat ever to be placed on film!) who’s hot on the trail of Damien
and who wants to warn Holden about the type of boy he has in his household. She heads to the military school and, once she has seen Scott-Taylor’s face, freaks out, hurriedly driving back to town. Her car stops on a seemingly deserted road, but once she gets out, there’s our old friend the crow again! He does a Tippi Hedren on her, clawing at her hair, face and eyes as she flails about helplessly. After she’s been roundly assaulted by the evil beast (as harrowing Jerry Goldsmith music throbs away), she struggles to her feet only to find a massive truck hurtling towards her at full throttle!
Deaths continue to pile up. During a school tour of Holden’s company, two of the chemists are fatally injured in a fume-spewing explosion. 
All of the boys are hospitalized with minor injuries to their lungs, but Scott-Taylor is completely unaffected. When his blood work is scrutinized by a doctor (future Designing Women costar Meshach Taylor in his movie debut), evil forces dictate that the doctor not be allowed to disclose what he’s found, resulting in a particularly nasty and unforgettable demise for him as well.
Holden’s once-close friend, Nicholas Pryor, also finds out Damien’s secret and, in light of what has happened to so many others, begins to freak out, resorting to keeping religious iconography all over his room and person. Like others, he tries to warn Holden of the danger, but Holden is stubbornly reluctant to believe any of it (at least for the longest time.) It takes yet one more incident before he will agree to examine the evidence against his nephew.
In case you haven’t guessed it, very few of the primary actors in the movie wind up making it to the end credits! The film takes pleasure in dreaming up inventive ways to bump people off. Where The Omen was starkly serious and more threatening in tone, this sequel takes things a little further in the gore department and occasionally winds up being unintentionally funny thanks to its own squalor. It is undeniably entertaining, however.
One thing that helps add some dimension to the proceedings is the fact that Scott-Taylor has no idea at first that he is a child of Satan. He wants to be a normal boy. Eventually, he has no choice but to face what he is 
(a fact he discovers in a memorable bathroom mirror scene, followed by a desperate race through the woods in a fruitless effort to escape his fate.) The producers, smelling money in the prospect of yet another installment, adjusted the ending to make sure Damien could return and, in fact, he did in the form of Sam Neill three years later in The Final Conflict. (Oddly enough, even though only three years had passed in between films, Damien was now a grown man!) This film provides a hint to the sexual power Damien will eventually possess when he is swarmed by a bunch of teen girls in their best 70s 'dos at a graduation cotillion.
Scott-Taylor (a blond whose hair was dyed for this role) worked as an actor for about another decade until retiring from acting to become a lawyer. Can you imagine being in court with DAMIEN as your attorney?! He does an excellent job here, able to express the many facets of his conflicted character.
A more interesting backstory is Lucas Donat. He never made another film or even appeared on TV despite being the son of busy character actor Peter Donat and The Waltons’ Michael Learned! He went on to help found an advertising agency that is responsible for all those eharmony.com commercials. Even more fascinating is that through his wife, who he married in 1984, he has as his mother-in-law Helen Reddy!!!!!
Holden had been offered the leading role in The Omen, but turned it down. After that film’s stunning success, he didn’t hesitate when asked to be in the sequel. (The Omen cost $2.8 million to make and grossed over $60 million… This sequel cost $4 million and made over $26 million, not as successful, but certainly not a failure.) He was only about 60, but looked every inch of that and more thanks to some hard drinking and smoking. He had also picked up a liver ailment in New Guinea shortly before filming began. Sadly, he would die in an alcohol related fall in 1981.
Grant had been a big fan of the first film and was also eager to get in on the action. She was riding the wave of success that had come from her 1975 Supporting Actress Oscar for Shampoo and nomination the next year for Voyage of the Damned, winning top-billed roles in several projects. It was a small wave, however, and before long she was back to supporting parts. (To help indicate Holden’s physical decline, she was only nine years younger than him in real life, despite looking far younger.) As I’ve indicated in my previous tribute to her, she is marvelous in this movie and has a scream at the end that is wondrous. She essays her role here perfectly.
Foxworth (who was Elizabeth Montgomery’s live-in lover from 1973 until their marriage in 1993, two years before her premature death from cancer) was in Airport ’77 with Grant the prior year. He wasn’t able to become a leading man in the cinema, but made a strong impression on Falcon Crest for the first several years as Jane Wyman’s chief antagonist. Always an outspoken persona, he eventually quit the series when he disagreed with the direction of it. He has become chiefly involved in voice work for animation lately.
Lew Ayres, of course, is notable for having starred in the classic 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front and the later Johnny Belinda, for which he earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination. His pacifist beliefs raised some eyebrows during WWII, but he did serve in the Medical Corps (following a sticky situation in which he first was denied that right and briefly did Civilian Public Service work.) From 1934 to 1940, he was Mr. Ginger Rogers! This was his final feature film.
Miss Sydney had been a leading lady of the silver screen from the late 20s through the mid-40s, but, except for a few appearances in the 50s, was absent from the cinema until 1973 when she made a comeback in Joanne Woodward’s Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, scoring an Oscar nomination as her overbearing mother. This kicked off a wealth of amusing, usually cranky, parts for her right up until the end when she passed away at age 88 from throat cancer (twenty one years after this film!)
Elizabeth Shephard (billed elsewhere generally as Shepherd) had been working on British TV since the late 50s and went on to a long, prolific career in that same vein as well as in the movies. Horror fans know her as the leading lady in Vincent Price’s Hammer Film, Tomb of Ligeia, directed by Roger Corman. She also made a memorably mysterious appearance as Kevin Bacon’s mother in Criminal Law (the movie, not the TV show.)
This was an early role for lean, stern-looking Henrickson (who, as a runaway at age 12, didn’t learn to read until he was 30.) He’d had small roles in three major films before this (Dog Day Afternoon, Network and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and would go on to a very busy career as a character actor in such films as The Right Stuff, The Terminator, Aliens, Alien 3 and the Underworld classic Color of Night!
Note how foreign posters for the film (as always) demonstrate a far more vivid and garish approach than the more austere one that U.S. moviegoers saw. Spanish posters included shots of Holden and Grant within the wing of the crow while the American poster was far more plain. This one is completely different in concept and, with the scantily clad victim on the ground, almost suggests a whole other film altogether!
The plotline of the movie doesn’t really hold up to very close scrutiny, but it’s a pretty entertaining way to kill (and kill!) almost two hours. Cinema of the 70s was rife with paranoia
about satanic possession, devil worship, cults and so on. I always say I’m not afraid of Satan, but I am afraid of the fanatics who are devoted to him. (The same way any sort of freaked out cult or gang scares me.) People can get really warped sometimes if they become involved in something diabolical and have immersed themselves into all the related gobbledygook. The damage they do when under that influence is real, regardless of whether what they believe in is true or not!
As Halloween prepares to descend on us, be sure to have plenty of fun, but also take pains to make it safe! (i.e.- no ice skating on a partially frozen pond, no tours of a chemical plant, no nosiness about patients’ blood work and by all means, stay in the car if it breaks down and there’s a black crow nearby!)
These days we’re exposed to a less-than-wonderful version of Linda Evans, 
thanks to some really, REALLY bad cosmetic surgeries and a tendency to set herself up for ridicule whether it be making her stage debut in an ill-advised production or promoting a product whose value is in serious question. However, back in her day, Miss Evans was a spectacular looking beauty with an amiable, approachable personality that won her legions of fans and made her a household name.
The child of two professional dancers, she was born Linda Evenstad in Hartford, Connecticut in 1942. Her father’s father had come to the US as a child in 1884 with his mother, a Norwegian, and those genes passed on to Linda who grew up tall, blue-eyed and possessed strong cheekbones. (Though she would be known throughout all of her late teen and adult life as a blonde, she is a natural brunette.)
Not long after her birth, 
her parents moved to North Hollywood where career opportunities were greater. An attendee at the famous Hollywood High School, she was painfully shy and her parents encouraged her to take acting lessons in order to help overcome this. Already a cute young lady, she soon took an interest in the craft and began to land roles on TV series and in movies.
Her very first professional TV gig, in 1960, was on a series called Bachelor Father, a vehicle for film actor John Forsythe who starred as a man raising his teenaged niece. Evenstad (which was soon changed to Evans) played one of the niece’s friends and Forsythe took care to help the fledgling actress get through her first big job. She then played bit parts on five different episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
More TV guest work followed until she landed a small role in the 1963 feature film Twilight of Honor, which starred Richard Chamberlain. Next, she had a more significant role in the Disney film Those Calloways, an outdoorsy family drama that starred Brian Keith, Vera Miles and Brandon de Wilde.
Beach Blanket Bingo, one of the many, many Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello sand, sun and surf confections, came out in 1965. Evans was cast as teen singing sensation Sugar Kane, who is managed by Paul Lynde, but kidnapped by the villainous Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck.) Her singing in the film was (quite obviously) dubbed. (This shot to the right is actually from a TV appearance on The Eleventh Hour, but is a lot how she looked in Bingo.)
On the heels of this came the opportunity to costar on a new western TV series called The Big Valley, a program that took the concept of Bonanza 
(which featured a widower with three sons) and gave it an injection of estrogen. The legendary Miss Barbara Stanwyck was the special-billed star of the show, playing a widow with four children and (from the first episode on) an honorary son (one sired by her now-dead husband with another woman.)
As Audra Barkley, Evans was intended to be a fiery, independent colt who slapped first and asked questions later. That worked for a little while, but it soon became clear that Evans toughness and vitality paled when compared to Stanwyck. (In her defense, Broderick Crawford’s toughness would have paled beside the throaty, rifle-cocked Stanwyck, 
who performed virtually all of her own stunts while in her late 50s!) One time, in the wings of the set, Evans asked Stanwyck how to enter a scene with presence. Stanwyck told Evans she’d show her how and just as the cameras rolled, she gave Evans a kick in the pants and a bit of a shove! Evans then burst into the scene with all the oomph required. The two, however, did form a very solid bond and several episodes of the series focused on their mother-daughter relationship.
Evans also shared chemistry with her TV half-brother Lee Majors, a slight flicker of incest threatening some of their earliest moments together on the show. Later, they forged a visible friendship and caring relationship, something all the actors/characters were to do with each other except for Charles Briles, as youngest brother Eugene, who was called away to Vietnam soon into the series and written out. The Barkleys were always presented as morally responsible citizens, occasionally causing detriment to themselves because of their nobility in the face of more opportunistic or evil people.
At first, attempts were made to give Evans something of a period look, with long dresses and 
wavy hair, little makeup and an earthier look in general. Eventually, this was practically abandoned and Evans wore sleek, tailored riding gauchos, trim, satin blouses (ones designed by Nolan Miller and which would be virtually duplicated years later on Dynasty where he was the chief designer), black false eyelashes and her hair was a luminous, platinum, free-flowing mane. She basically became Barbie Goes West and looked unbelievably stunning.
This change (including a little nose work) was also the result of the influence of her husband, John Derek, who she married in 1968. He was known, then and later, for making over his women into what he considered the ideal. He also didn’t want her to work and she acquiesced rather willingly, cutting back her appearances on the series in the last year and a half. Their marriage would last until 1974 when he pushed her aside for a new muse, Bo Derek, though they would remain friends until his death.
Apart from a film Derek co-directed called Childish Things (and known also as Confessions of Tom Harris and Tale of the Cock!) in 1969, which co-starred Don Murray, E
vans didn’t act at all until 1973 when the wheels were coming off the marriage. Derek, in 1971, took seminude photos of Evans and they were published in Playboy (and later unearthed, as they tended to do, in 1982 when she was starring on Dynasty.)
Evans found, in the here-today-gone-tomorrow world of Tinseltown, that jobs for a thirtysomething TV actress weren’t exactly pouring in. Still, time was that a person could land decent paying guest roles on dramatic series to make ends meet and she worked on McCloud, Banacek, Mannix, Nakia, Harry-O, McMillan & Wife and The Rockford Files, all series starring men of a certain age that she could complement nicely.
In 1974, she got a part as a rape victim in a trashy and exploitive racial drama called The Klansman. The cast of names involved included Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, Cameron Mitchell, O.J. Simpson, Lola Falana and Luciana Paluzzi, so it’s not like she went down alone, but it was close to a low point on her resume.
1975 brought another lousy movie, one that gained new attention with the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 when they unearthed it for the sole purpose of making fun of it. Mitchell starred Joe Don Baker and had Linda as a prostitute who winds up falling for the husky leading man. Cheap, violent and tacky, it was another low-rung project. This year she married her second husband, 
Beverly Hills Realtor Stan Herman, though they were divorced just about the time Dynasty first aired.
A regular role in a series followed, though it only lasted thirteen episodes. Hunter (not the one starring Fred Dryer) had her costarring with James Franciscus and concerned tales of espionage. His cover was as a bookstore proprietor and she posed as a model. She then worked on a couple of TV films, Nowhere to Run with David Janssen (who had become a friend) and Stefanie Powers (who had been a classmate at Hollywood High) as well as Standing Tall, a western in which she was Robert Forster’s wife.
In 1979, she teamed up with Lee Marvin again, though the end result wasn’t much better than The Klansman. Avalanche Express
was an adventure film that also featured Robert Shaw, Maximilian Schell, Mike Conners, Horst Bucholtz and Joe Namath. Shaw was so ill during the filming (and, in fact, died before it was over) that his voice was deemed unusable and an unbilled Rich Little redid practically all of his dialogue in post-production. (He certainly doesn't look too hot in the photo below. And Linda is not the first person you'd expect to see in an action yarn like this either!) 
Steve McQueen’s late-career western Tom Horn came in 1980 and she was cast
as his love interest. By this time, westerns didn’t have a fraction of the popularity that they had enjoyed previously (and would again later), but Evans had spent four years on The Big Valley and in other western projects to where she was comfortable in the genre. In fact, the TV series Dallas, which had a touch of western flair, had gone through all of its early stages as “The Linda Evans Project!” She was to be Pamela Barnes Ewing (a role eventually taken by Victoria Principal.) That didn’t pan out, but better things were on the horizon.
Aaron Spelling and Richard and Esther Shapiro were planning an ABC 
nighttime soap to capitalize on the very successful Dallas and decided to outdo the first show by going for more glamour and money onscreen. The result was Oil, a three-hour movie pilot that would kick off a series. They cast Linda as Krystle, the heroine, and George Peppard as Blake Carrington, a ruthless and controlling, but ultimately fair-minded, tycoon. When Peppard and the producers fell out over his interpretation of the part, he was fired and Spelling brought in John Forsythe, who had been working for him on Charlie’s Angels as the voice of Charles Townsend, to reshoot. The show was then retitled Dynasty.
Evans was thrilled to be reunited with Forsythe, the star of her very first TV show appearance and the two clicked instantly. In Blake and Krystle, they created an idealized couple who went through every conceivable bit of turmoil, but always made their way back together. (The actors, early on, decided that one character should never cheat on the other and, despite much pressure from the top brass, they never did.) It wasn’t always sweetness and light at first, however. Many fans forget that Blake raped Krystle during the first season, a time when marital rape was just beginning to be recognized as a crime.
Ratings were so-so that first year, so Spelling brought on a pot-stirring vixen, a female J.R. Ewing, 
in order to spice up the drama. Joan Collins as Alexis was an immediate smash and she and Evans’ characters were pitted against each other from the start. (Likewise, the press tended to play up friction between the actresses, which they denied repeatedly, despite never growing particularly close.) Their onscreen catfights became legendary, with the tomboyish Evans always enjoying them while the more brittle Collins dreaded them with a passion. Once, in 1986, Evans ended up fighting herself! (She had been playing an ill-advised dual role on the show.)
From that point, the show 
became a jaw-dropping fashion fest, with costumer Nolan Miller doing back flips in order to come up with showy ensembles for both Joan (who wore most of them like a classic icon) and Linda (who was more limited in her ability to show off a multitude of looks. She suited certain things far more than others.) Dynasty mania swept the nation and Evans was a household name, with women copying her distinctive hairstyle and padding their shoulders to the max. Incidentally, they are funny now, but, at the time, Linda carried off the shoulder pads beautifully and the look went well with her statuesque figure.
In 1982, she was teamed with Donna Mills, Genie Francis and other stars for the miniseries Bare Essence, 
all about the perfume industry, which eventually had life as a short-lived primetime soap. Jennifer O’Neill took over her role in the series since she was already very busy with Dynasty. She also appeared on a two-hour episode of The Love Boat. The strange thing was, it marked a reunion between her and her Big Valley costar Lee Majors, and they played lovers, but viewers had always seen them on the old series as siblings! I remember feeling just a tad of unease during that one. Evans was also briefly reunited with Barbara Stanwyck when she came onto Dynasty in order to introduce its spinoff, The Colbys, on which Stanwyck appeared for one season.
On the other occasions that she worked in other projects in the midst of Dynasty, Evans, an admitted tomboy and a horse-lover, tended to revisit her more rustic roots. She did Kenny Rogers as The Gambler: The Adventure Continues, North and South, Book II and The Last Frontier, a two-part movie filmed on location in which she played a woman having to forge a new life for herself in the Australian Outback.
She became the commercial spokeswoman for Crystal Light and for Clairol hair coloring (announcing that “forty isn’t fatal” in a popular series of ads.) She published a beauty book as many of her primetime soap actress peers had done as well. Look at the hooty expression on pal David Hasselhoff’s face in this shot of them in their exercise gear! She and Collins lent their personas to a series of sewing patterns modeled after the outfits they wore on Dynasty. There were dolls made of Blake, Krystle and Alexis. A near riot occurred at a department 
store at which some of the Dynasty stars were appearing and they had to be escorted out. Then there were the fragrances, Forever Krystle and Carrington. They lasted remarkably long for stunt colognes, but when the series died, they died soon after (despite attempts to keep the brand going.) FK can still be found on eBay and snarkier fans sometimes joke about it smelling like cat pee by now!
A scandal broke out in 1985 when Evans was paired with a potential new love interest on the show. Rock Hudson
was cast as Daniel Reece, the ex-lover of Krystle’s now-dead sister, and he sought to win her away from Blake, who was shutting her out of his business dealings at the time. The two shared a kiss during one scene and then not long after it was discovered that Hudson had been infected with AIDS at the time. A media firestorm erupted about whether Evans was safe from the disease or not (and this was at a stage when little was known about it.) Whatever she felt inside, to her credit she did not display any hysteria about it to the world. Incidentally, as a child, Evans had had two pinups on her bedroom wall. One was of John Derek, who she later married, and one was of Hudson.
Some viewers complained that Krystle’s hair never changed over the course of the near decade-long show (and thank Jesus she never wore it the way it looks in this portrait on the left!) It did, in fact, change subtly from year to year, but any time she tried any sort of significant departure, it was instantly shot down as looking foolish. (And, yes, some of the looks were definitely not the greatest!) Years of teasing and bleaching her hair in the 60s had left it very fine by the early 80s and she soon began wearing “secret hair,” thick strands of extra hair clipped into her own, as well as pieces (such as the twisty, thick braid/knot that could sometimes be found at the back of her neck.)
During her tenure on the show, Evans had been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, winning once, and an Emmy. 
By the time the series ended, though (she actually departed halfway through that season, citing fatigue with the hours and the role), her hair was a brassy blonde and sometimes was a wig entirely. Somehow, over the course of the series, Evans had gone from a vital, strikingly beautiful woman to a gaunt, breathy, truly rather annoying presence with a whispery voice that sounded like there was ground glass in her throat. She developed a method of acting with her eyes darting and a way of gasping for air before each line that really wore thin. It was time to check out.
She had love waiting for her anyway. By then, she had become acquainted with New Age singer/composer Yanni and the couple became inseparable, with her often being found in the audience of his concerts and the two traveling frequently 
all over. She also developed an association with a controversial mystic and spiritual channeler named JZ Knight who took to advising her on matters of life and career (and for a time adopted a hairstyle similar to Evans!) Evans eventually tried a new look with her hair that was patently bizarre. A wall of bangs hung over half her face, giving her the look of one of those people who are dressed up as half man and half woman or something!
Dynasty had been left, literally for some characters, in midair when it was canceled in 1989, so in 1991 a four-hour reunion movie was made. It was not very good thanks to a shoddy script and a stubborn decision to basically ignore much of the developments of the final season of the series, but at least it tied up Blake and Krystle’s storyline and had them living, as ever, happily in the end.
Evans all but disappeared for a time after this, eager to break away from Hollywood and its pressures. She made a couple of TV movies, sometimes playing a villain (as in The Stepmother, above) in order to change the pace, though she was beginning to show the effects of aging and the sun she always enjoyed so much on her ranch. (Check out the unretouched hand in this shot from Dazzle! Egads!) In 1998, she and Yanni parted ways.
Then she started having cosmetic 
surgeries and hawking this bizarre product called Rejuvenique, which purported to revive the facial muscles and tone the skin, lessening wrinkles. To use it, you basically strapped on a Friday the 13th hockey mask with little metal nodules inside it and it allegedly vibrated years off your face… Anyone who thinks that this device is what caused her face to change that much needs to get this in a helmet form to stimulate his or her brain! She started looking like fourth runner up in a Loretta Swit look-alike contest. Not a good thing. (And still worse was to come in that arena!)
By the time of the reunion special Dynasty: Catfights and Caviar, Linda barely resembled herself anymore. Soon after, it was announced that Joan and Linda were going to tour the country in a play called Legends (one that had a spotty history dating back to 1986 when it was done by Carol Channing and Mary Martin and Martin departed the production, allegedly over a script cut.) Joan had been on and off the stage ever since her days at The Royal Academy
of Dramatic Arts (not that she was Helen Hayes or anything), but Linda had never really done any legitimate stage work.
The two styles clashed, the allegedly untrue rumors of a feud began to look rather as if there was something to them and, by the time the eight-month sojourn was over, the ladies had pretty much had enough of each other. Beyond that, the show just wasn’t considered very funny or very good, especially a quarter of a century after it had been penned.
After that, Evans went to England
and entered a celebrity edition of Hell’s Kitchen and won! It’s tough to age gracefully in these years of Botox, collagen, silicon and a hundred other things including an obsession with youth and, sadly, Miss Evans made a few missteps when it came to her face (and she knows it.) We don’t seem to allow anyone to become little old ladies anymore. Who knows what the future holds for her and if she may be able to let up on the procedures and segue into seniorhood. She is, after all, pushing 70.
Her legacy as a TV icon is firmly in place, however. Few people have been the subject of a phenomenon as massive as Dynasty was. Recently, she received (along with Collins) the distinction of having a Barbie Doll modeled after her famous character. I’m wondering how many queens out there are buying these two collector’s items and engaging them in a hair-pulling, lily pond-splashing catfight! (Sadly, by now, I'm also wondering which has more plastic in it, the doll or Miss Evans.)
The Underworld has been a busy place, once again, with excessive work commitments, another theatre adjudication to write and some unfortunate health issues (which, hopefully, will be on the road to resolution in the next 48 hours!) I tried to frontload the month with three posts in swift succession, hoping I could knock out another one soon after, but it just didn’t happen. So anyway, enough about me!
One of my favorite guilty pleasure horror movies is 1978’s Damien: Omen II. A sequel to the blockbuster hit The Omen (which starred Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as parents to a toddler who is The Antichrist), this movie takes place about seven years later and stars William Holden and an Underworld fave, Miss Lee Grant. The cuddly little monster from the first film has grown up a bit into early teenage Jonathan Scott-Taylor and resides with the late Peck’s brother Holden, Holden’s wife Grant and his son Lucas Donat. 
dig, the wall supposedly depicting the face of The Antichrist at various developmental stages. When he and his associate witness the toddler Damien’s visage on the artifact, they are involved in a sand-riddled cave in before they can share what they know. The story then picks up at Holden’s estate, a beautifully appointed mansion that, in this film, is also a winter wonderland.
She (wisely) doesn’t trust Scott-Taylor at all and dislikes the effect he has on her beloved nephew Donat. In a hilarious dinner table scene, she and Grant have an enmity that is palpable and she swiftly tosses Grant back into her place. Sadly, this gorgeous bit of rivalry is cut short when Sidney receives a visit in the night from an ominous black crow! Why, why, WHY did the writer have to remove the crusty and fretful Sidney from the storyline so soon?! I want more animosity and bickering from Grant and her… Note the way a shiny metal bird in the middle of the table forshadows the coming of the crow!
People can go on all they want to about the luxury and glamour of tumbled marble and slate flooring. In The Underworld, the lanai is paved with tiles bearing a pattern of the deceased, rigid corpse of Aunt Marion (Sidney), enjoying her eternal rest. This way, her scarlet lipstick etched face is never too far out of reach.
to rule America and then the world. At the military school that he and Donat attend, the commanding sergeant Lance Henrikson takes special interest in him and attempts to prep him for his sordid future. (This entire story thread has an unintentional -??- homoerotic bent to it. Because of the secrecy and menace of the situation, it always looks like Henrikson is one step away from trying to coerce Scott-Taylor into spending seven minutes in heaven with him!) 
Robert Foxworth over the direction of things. In a memorable scene, Ayres pays the price for not going along with Foxworth’s plans when he falls beneath the ice of a partially frozen lake. His panic-stricken body is shown floating under the ice as skaters playing hockey frantically try to break it open and let him out. This is a gripping scene, made more meaningful by Holden’s panic and remorse. There is foreshadowing here, too, as Foxworth talks about putting his project "on ice" and Donat's birthday cake is in the form of a lake that must be cut into.
and who wants to warn Holden about the type of boy he has in his household. She heads to the military school and, once she has seen Scott-Taylor’s face, freaks out, hurriedly driving back to town. Her car stops on a seemingly deserted road, but once she gets out, there’s our old friend the crow again! He does a Tippi Hedren on her, clawing at her hair, face and eyes as she flails about helplessly. After she’s been roundly assaulted by the evil beast (as harrowing Jerry Goldsmith music throbs away), she struggles to her feet only to find a massive truck hurtling towards her at full throttle!
All of the boys are hospitalized with minor injuries to their lungs, but Scott-Taylor is completely unaffected. When his blood work is scrutinized by a doctor (future Designing Women costar Meshach Taylor in his movie debut), evil forces dictate that the doctor not be allowed to disclose what he’s found, resulting in a particularly nasty and unforgettable demise for him as well.
Holden’s once-close friend, Nicholas Pryor, also finds out Damien’s secret and, in light of what has happened to so many others, begins to freak out, resorting to keeping religious iconography all over his room and person. Like others, he tries to warn Holden of the danger, but Holden is stubbornly reluctant to believe any of it (at least for the longest time.) It takes yet one more incident before he will agree to examine the evidence against his nephew.
In case you haven’t guessed it, very few of the primary actors in the movie wind up making it to the end credits! The film takes pleasure in dreaming up inventive ways to bump people off. Where The Omen was starkly serious and more threatening in tone, this sequel takes things a little further in the gore department and occasionally winds up being unintentionally funny thanks to its own squalor. It is undeniably entertaining, however.
(a fact he discovers in a memorable bathroom mirror scene, followed by a desperate race through the woods in a fruitless effort to escape his fate.) The producers, smelling money in the prospect of yet another installment, adjusted the ending to make sure Damien could return and, in fact, he did in the form of Sam Neill three years later in The Final Conflict. (Oddly enough, even though only three years had passed in between films, Damien was now a grown man!) This film provides a hint to the sexual power Damien will eventually possess when he is swarmed by a bunch of teen girls in their best 70s 'dos at a graduation cotillion.
Scott-Taylor (a blond whose hair was dyed for this role) worked as an actor for about another decade until retiring from acting to become a lawyer. Can you imagine being in court with DAMIEN as your attorney?! He does an excellent job here, able to express the many facets of his conflicted character.
A more interesting backstory is Lucas Donat. He never made another film or even appeared on TV despite being the son of busy character actor Peter Donat and The Waltons’ Michael Learned! He went on to help found an advertising agency that is responsible for all those eharmony.com commercials. Even more fascinating is that through his wife, who he married in 1984, he has as his mother-in-law Helen Reddy!!!!!
Holden had been offered the leading role in The Omen, but turned it down. After that film’s stunning success, he didn’t hesitate when asked to be in the sequel. (The Omen cost $2.8 million to make and grossed over $60 million… This sequel cost $4 million and made over $26 million, not as successful, but certainly not a failure.) He was only about 60, but looked every inch of that and more thanks to some hard drinking and smoking. He had also picked up a liver ailment in New Guinea shortly before filming began. Sadly, he would die in an alcohol related fall in 1981.
Grant had been a big fan of the first film and was also eager to get in on the action. She was riding the wave of success that had come from her 1975 Supporting Actress Oscar for Shampoo and nomination the next year for Voyage of the Damned, winning top-billed roles in several projects. It was a small wave, however, and before long she was back to supporting parts. (To help indicate Holden’s physical decline, she was only nine years younger than him in real life, despite looking far younger.) As I’ve indicated in my previous tribute to her, she is marvelous in this movie and has a scream at the end that is wondrous. She essays her role here perfectly.
Foxworth (who was Elizabeth Montgomery’s live-in lover from 1973 until their marriage in 1993, two years before her premature death from cancer) was in Airport ’77 with Grant the prior year. He wasn’t able to become a leading man in the cinema, but made a strong impression on Falcon Crest for the first several years as Jane Wyman’s chief antagonist. Always an outspoken persona, he eventually quit the series when he disagreed with the direction of it. He has become chiefly involved in voice work for animation lately.
Lew Ayres, of course, is notable for having starred in the classic 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front and the later Johnny Belinda, for which he earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination. His pacifist beliefs raised some eyebrows during WWII, but he did serve in the Medical Corps (following a sticky situation in which he first was denied that right and briefly did Civilian Public Service work.) From 1934 to 1940, he was Mr. Ginger Rogers! This was his final feature film.
Miss Sydney had been a leading lady of the silver screen from the late 20s through the mid-40s, but, except for a few appearances in the 50s, was absent from the cinema until 1973 when she made a comeback in Joanne Woodward’s Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, scoring an Oscar nomination as her overbearing mother. This kicked off a wealth of amusing, usually cranky, parts for her right up until the end when she passed away at age 88 from throat cancer (twenty one years after this film!)
Elizabeth Shephard (billed elsewhere generally as Shepherd) had been working on British TV since the late 50s and went on to a long, prolific career in that same vein as well as in the movies. Horror fans know her as the leading lady in Vincent Price’s Hammer Film, Tomb of Ligeia, directed by Roger Corman. She also made a memorably mysterious appearance as Kevin Bacon’s mother in Criminal Law (the movie, not the TV show.)
This was an early role for lean, stern-looking Henrickson (who, as a runaway at age 12, didn’t learn to read until he was 30.) He’d had small roles in three major films before this (Dog Day Afternoon, Network and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and would go on to a very busy career as a character actor in such films as The Right Stuff, The Terminator, Aliens, Alien 3 and the Underworld classic Color of Night!
Note how foreign posters for the film (as always) demonstrate a far more vivid and garish approach than the more austere one that U.S. moviegoers saw. Spanish posters included shots of Holden and Grant within the wing of the crow while the American poster was far more plain. This one is completely different in concept and, with the scantily clad victim on the ground, almost suggests a whole other film altogether!
about satanic possession, devil worship, cults and so on. I always say I’m not afraid of Satan, but I am afraid of the fanatics who are devoted to him. (The same way any sort of freaked out cult or gang scares me.) People can get really warped sometimes if they become involved in something diabolical and have immersed themselves into all the related gobbledygook. The damage they do when under that influence is real, regardless of whether what they believe in is true or not!
