Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

MEGIDDO -- which was advertised as "Megiddo: Omega Code 2" -- is ostensibly a prequel and sequel to the dreadful OMEGA CODE*, which I reviewed Very Negatively in an effort I titled "Doomsday Made Dull". I had thought OMEGA CODE was just about the worst movie that could be made about the Book of Revelation. The producers heard me and took that as a personal challenge; they made MEGIDDO, and it's even worse!

This movie hit the theaters ten days after the attack on the World Trade Center. The promoters did not even attempt to reschedule its opening. In fact one of the producers made some idiotic comment suggesting that he thought that maybe God coordinated the dates of the attack and of the movie's opening in order to make the public more receptive to the movie's message -- and that's not the most offensive thing about this movie!

If you dodged the bullet and didn't see OMEGA CODE, I'll very briefly summarize: Michael York is Stone Alexander, head of the World Union, who uses the "Torah Code" computer program to take over the world, and makes himself world dictator. Apparently he's just another power hungry politician until he winds up in the hospital with a head wound and comes out a megalomaniac much like Caligula in I CLAUDIUS, and then we know he is in Satan's power. Just as he's about to unravel the final Biblical Code that will make himself all-powerful, the heavens open up, and some evil spirit within him pulls out of his re-opened head wound (in second rate special effects), letting him collapse on the floor. End of movie.

MEGIDDO tells the whole awful story again, from even before the beginning of the first movie, with changes - and not for the better. I hate this flick so much I'm going to tell you the whole thing: Much of this plot seems to be lifted from the three Omen movies. As a little boy, Stone Alexander is a rotten spoiled kid who tries to murder his baby brother, using supernatural powers. His father (David Hedison) sends him off to a military academy in Rome. Immediately Stone slips off the campus and makes his way to an abandoned cobwebby Roman Catholic Church (it's hard to imagine a cobwebby church inside Rome, especially with all the ornamentation still intact), where a ghostly demonic priest (Udo Kier, who plays vampires a lot) informs him of his destiny and speaks Latin to him. Stone goes back to the academy and ten years later is a studly young man (Noah Huntley), seducing the commandant's daughter and using demonic animals to intimidate the commandant.

Twenty years later, having married the commandant's daughter (now Diane Venora, who - according to the publicity for this flick - came out of retirement to make this movie, although it appears that she had actually been working sporadically in movies during the previous several years), Stone (now Michael York, who also co-produced; York seems shorter and a LOT less impressive than teenage Huntley) is head of the European Union and his little brother David (Michael Biehn) is a US Congressman. Dad doesn't care for Stone's ambition and is planning to disinherit him from his media conglomerate, but Stone murders daddy instead and even keeps a videotape of the event.

Ten more years pass and now Stone is head of the World Union, which now commands eight-tenths of the world - lacking only North America and China. David is now Vice President of the United States. The President (R. Lee Ermey, who played the sadistic drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket) refuses to surrender US sovereignty to Stone and is killed off by Stone's supernatural power, catapulting brother David into the Presidency. Then Stone tries to blackmail David into surrendering the US by using a digitally altered videotape that makes it look like it was David who killed dad. David won't yield, but the Secretary of State stages a coup to make himself President and join America to Stone's "New World Order". David becomes a fugitive leader, with a loyal Sixth Fleet preparing to attack Stone's big gathering of his World Union powers at Megiddo in Israel.

There is a terrific battle, with many Mattel tanks blown up, and just as David thinks he's cornered big brother Stone, Stone's body splits apart to reveal Satan himself (the sort of computerized animation of Toy Story or Final Fantasy - their idea of Satan seems to be inspired by the Cathedral gargoyles in Disney's Hunchback - the shift from live actor to animated cartoon has the ridiculous effect of ROGER RABBIT or the end of LAWNMOWER MAN). Just then a heavenly light comes down and destroys the demonic priest, melts the New World Order army (much like the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark), makes the earth open up (like the climax of The Ten Commandments) and throws Satan down into hell. The end.

In the course of this movie, they manage to make use of about five seconds of the first movie, the OMEGA CODE, but otherwise - except for Michael York and the name of his character - just about everything has changed*. This time there is absolutely no mention of Bible Codes or a head wound. None of the characters (except for York) in the first movie (I remember Michael Ironside as a thug priest, and a whole flock of religious leaders from all the world's faiths), shows up in this story. It is as if they decided to rewrite the entire first movie and only kept the same villain; pity they didn't work a net improvement while they were at it.

Unlike the OMEGA CODE, nobody in this movie quotes from the Bible ... except the incarnate Satan, Michael York (who sometimes mixes it with quotes from Shakespeare), who didn't seem to read the last few chapters. Throughout and especially at the end, York speaks of Jesus only as the "Nazarene" - an affectation ripped from the third Omen flick. Some actors would have avoided any connection with this movie (Kent McCord, of the old "Adam-12" cop show, has a speaking part in the opening minutes but decided to pull his name out of the credits) but Michael York has even written a book about the making of this film.

A word about the name of the movie. Megiddo is about 57 miles north of Jerusalem, and often the scene of important battles in the Old Testament. In the Book of Revelations, 16:16, there is a vision that all the world's armies will gather "at the place called in Hebrew Armageddon". It is almost universally accepted that Armageddon is the Greek transliteration for the Hebrew "Har Megiddo", "the Mountain of Megiddo" -- the only problem is that Megiddo is no mountain but a plain. Megiddo is mentioned about a dozen times in the (Hebrew) Bible ... in the corresponding verses in the Septuagint it is spelled (in Greek) almost as many different ways -- sometimes the g is doubled, sometimes the d is doubled, etc. -- but never preceded with Ar- or Har-. Bible scholar Hugh J. Schonfield speculated that Armageddon was really "Rama Gad Yavan", or Ramath Gad of the Greeks, which he thought was a New Testament era description of Ramath-Gilead, scene of the Old Testament battle where Ahab was killed (the Talmud mentions a place called "Gad Yavan"). It's easy to conjure up theories about Armageddon (especially since it seems important that the place has a Hebrew name - not necessarily a name in any other language - and rendering it in Greek undoubtedly changed it somewhat). I have my own theory - nobody else agrees with it - that Armageddon is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew or Aramaic anagram (such as occur occasionally in Talmudic literature) for "Roma-Neged" or "Magnificent Rome" (a way of specifying the capital city instead of the entire empire). Well, you don't have to accept anybody's interpretation, but it seems a little impractical to have not only all the world's leaders, but all of their entire tank corps, arriving at Megiddo.

Whoever wrote this movie (the credits are to the same writers as Omega Code) didn't seem to know that the Vice President never travels abroad with the President, or that the Speaker of the House, not the Secretary of State, is next in line after the VP. Or that when one President dies, all his cabinet officers, including the Secretary of State, instantly submit their resignations to his successor. Or that the President can fire the Secretary of State at whim. Or that Americans aren't likely to elect a ticket whose VP candidate is the younger brother of a European warlord. Or that someone isn't going to become world dictator if his speech writing isn't good enough for a high school debating team. We get confusing signals about whether York's character was satanic from childhood, or became possessed later or was seduced by the Dark Side. The anti-Catholic tone of this film gets irritating very quickly (this time no mention of other religions at all, but the demonic priest hovers around in standard clerical garb with what is obviously an authentic Catholic missal with a cross on the cover and performs a blasphemous parody of Catholic communion), and (except for the futile humanitarianism of Venora's character) nobody in this movie is actually doing good works. It is as if the whole lesson of the Bible were summed up as Oppose the United Nations & the European Union, not something of a more constructive nature.

I have just saved you the rental price and about an hour and a half of your time which can be spent doing something more uplifting.

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* It turns out there is a good reason why there is virtually nothing - including a mention of the name - of OMEGA CODE in MEGIDDO and the whole scenario is entirely rewritten: In July 2000, while MEGIDDO was being planned, the production company was sued by Sylvia Fleener, author of a novel published in 1996 (two years before the OMEGA CODE movie) titled "The Omega Syndrome". There was very persuasive evidence that the people involved with the movie had used copies of her novel for inspiration, and there were some very convincing indications of copying; the sort of circumstantial evidence that Thoreau once likened to finding a trout in the milk can. Although the mind boggles that someone would bother to try to claim the credit for this bilge, Fleener sued the movie's producers for $40 Million. The federal district court for central California rejected (some two weeks before MEGIDDO opened) an effort to throw out the suit, and it was finally settled to Fleener's satisfaction in December 2001, two months after MEGIDDO opened and closed.


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age