{"id":6798,"date":"2024-10-25T10:20:58","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6798"},"modified":"2024-10-25T10:20:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:20:58","slug":"holocaust-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/holocaust-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Holocaust 2000<\/strong> (1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, full frontal male nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alberto De Martino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sergio Donati and Alberto De Martino\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Music: Ennio Morricone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Erico Menczer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1978 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kirk Douglas, Simon Ward, Agostina Belli, Anthony Quayle, Virginia McKenna, Spiros Focas, Ivo Garrani, Alexander Knox, Adolfo Celi, Romolo Valli, Massimo Foschi, Geoffrey Keen, John Carlin, Peter Cellier, Gerard Hely.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I forgot how much I enjoyed Holocaust 2000<\/strong>, a gloriously silly, over the top, Italian knock-off of The Omen, until I recently acquired a copy of it. For reasons unknown to me (and everybody else), the title was changed to Rain of Fire which is a stupid title. First, it\u2019s too vague and doesn\u2019t tell you what the movie\u2019s about. Second, it\u2019s too similar to Reign of Fire, the 2002 movie in which dragons bring about a worldwide holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u00a0No, I prefer to stick with Holocaust 2000<\/strong> as it\u2019s the title under which I first saw it. It ran on network TV one Saturday night in fall \u201980 (I think). I was 12 and never missed a chance to watch a horror movie. We didn\u2019t have cable TV so I had to settle for edited versions of R-rated movies. It\u2019s okay because it allowed me the joy of watching the uncut versions once we got cable (March \u201983) and later, a VCR (December \u201984).<\/p>\n

\u00a0I honestly don\u2019t remember the first time I saw Holocaust 2000<\/strong> in its full uncut version. I want to say it was sometime in the early 00s, but I can\u2019t be sure. In any event, I rewatched it this past weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Kirk Douglas (Spartacus) stars as Robert Caine, a wealthy industrialist who wants to build a huge nuclear power plant in a Middle Eastern desert. Naturally, he faces opposition from all directions. Among those against it are his shrewish wife Eva (McKenna, Born Free) and the country\u2019s new Prime Minister (Garrani, Black Sunday). Well, guess what? This facility is going to be built. Caine\u2019s son Angel (Ward, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed) will see to that. Why? He just happens to be the Antichrist. Being in control of a nuclear plant makes it easier to wipe out mankind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Alberto De Martino (Crime Boss) treats the son\u2019s true identity as a surprise revelation, but it\u2019s obvious that Angel is the Antichrist. Come on, his name\u2019s Angel. And if that\u2019s not enough, how come everybody that opposes the facility mysteriously dies? Early on, Eva is stabbed at a party by an Arab assassin targeting Caine just minutes after informing him that, as the major stockholder in the company, she plans to stop construction on the plant. The PM who thinks the plant will ultimately do more harm than good ends up having the top of his head sliced off by a helicopter blade. As for the plant, Caine slowly begins to see parallels between it and the passage in Revelations that describes the Antichrist\u2019s rising. Its design closely resembles that of the Beast depicted in a cave painting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The more Caine sees what\u2019s really going on, the more unhinged he becomes. Not long after his wife dies, Caine hooks up with Sara (Belli, Scent of a Woman), a young photographer who shows him a sacred cave near the proposed site of the plant. She becomes pregnant with his child which is when he really goes off the rails. He becomes convinced that she\u2019s carrying the Antichrist in her womb after a monsignor (Valli, Duck, You Sucker) tells him that the second son, the Antichrist \u201cwill unleash the dragon of the apocalypse\u201d. Since we already know Angel is the Antichrist, there has to be some logical explanation as to why it\u2019s so. I\u2019m not going to reveal it, but it\u2019s as silly as everything else that happens in this oddball horror flick.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Italian horror films have a distinctive look and feel. Just look at anything by Lucio Fulci (The Beyond), Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Mario Bava (Twitch of the Death Nerve). This extends to cheaper ones like Holocaust 2000<\/strong>. As you may recall, there were a whole slew of cheap Italian-made exploitation movies in the 70s and 80s, some of which starred known American actors. Fred Williamson starred in his fair share (1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland). It\u2019s hard to believe a distinguished veteran actor like Kirk Douglas would agree to be in a movie like Holocaust 2000<\/strong> yet here we are. Normally, I\u2019d say something about him bringing a measure of dignity to his role. Not in this case however. Douglas allows himself to indulge in some serious overacting as his character becomes more and more bonkers. He even appears fully nude in a scene where he has a nightmare about witnessing the end of the world. He doesn\u2019t embarrass himself. On the contrary, he acquits himself quite nicely. He\u2019s a professional and handles the role like a pro. It\u2019s not a bad performance, it\u2019s just weird. Ward goes a good job as Angel. He plays it subtle, maintaining a calm fa\u00e7ade with sinister undertones.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The gore effects in Holocaust 2000<\/strong> are quite good. The scene with the helicopter blade is the best. It\u2019s my favorite scene in the movie. There\u2019s also a cool scene where Douglas bashes somebody\u2019s skull in. That\u2019s one thing I can say for Italian horror flicks, they don\u2019t skimp on gore. Ennio Morricone contributes a nicely eerie score. The cinematography and set design add to the experience as well. The scenes inside the asylum are a stand-out with the transparent glass walls and total whiteness reminiscent of the hospital morgue in The Beyond. Some of the dialogue is priceless. In one scene, Douglas tells a colleague, \u201cStop talking like a ridiculous prophet of the apocalypse!\u201d In another, he says, \u201cWe\u2019ve created a monster. A monster that will destroy the world.\u201d You have to love lines like that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You may think I\u2019m giving Holocaust 2000<\/strong> too much credit by awarding it three-and-a-half stars. You have to look at it this way. Most of today\u2019s horror movies suck. They\u2019re these PG-13 bores that wouldn\u2019t even scare a grade schooler. With older horror movies like Holocaust 2000<\/strong>, there\u2019s a certain integrity and purity of form. The 70s and 80s were a great time for the genre. Most were rated R. Many had a decent level of gore and violence. Most importantly, several of them were actually scary. I wouldn\u2019t say that Holocaust 2000<\/strong> scared me. It\u2019s more weird than scary, but that\u2019s still better than the fright-free snoozers Hollywood churns out these days. To me, Holocaust 2000<\/strong> is great fun with its silly premise and the theology interwoven throughout. It is what it is, a cheap Omen knock-off, and it\u2019s done well.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holocaust 2000 (1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, full frontal male nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alberto De Martino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sergio Donati and Alberto De Martino\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Music: Ennio Morricone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Erico Menczer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1978 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kirk Douglas, Simon Ward, Agostina Belli, Anthony Quayle, Virginia McKenna, Spiros Focas, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Holocaust-2000-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7068,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions\/7068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}