in Eagle River, Wisconsin for the skating scene, with local children playing the skaters. The Field Museum of Natural History, depicting the Thorn Museum, was also used in several scenes throughout the film, including some of its final minutes. The opening scenes were filmed in Acre, Israel, as well as the ruins of the crusader city Akko. The interiors were shot at 20th Century Fox soundstages in Los Angeles. Reception The film received mixed reviews, but was deemed as a worthy sequel. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 46% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's consensus states: "Damien dishes out ghoulish scares and a Biblical body count to generate some morbid fun, but this repetitious sequel lacks the sophistication of its predecessor." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "Perhaps my resistance has given out but Damien—Omen II, though it's as foolish as the first film, is rather more fun to watch and sometimes very stylish-looking." Variety wrote, "Damien is obviously wearing out his welcome, but presold interest and a couple of gruesome, ghastly death scenes should shore up business for the summer." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune found it inferior to the original because "there's nothing particularly surprising or horrifying about a teen-ager in league with the devil. Also, the commotion the kid inspires this time is not particularly frightening." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Far from advancing the unsavory premise of the first film, this one doggedly retraces its steps. The result is an inferior copy rather than a narrative continuation." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "For all its slavish copying of the original, 'Damien — Omen II' plays differently. It's a hoot instead of a scream. Its deaths are frequent and exceedingly graphic, but you wait for them as for the acts on a variety bill. The connective tissue is frailer this time, and there is almost no accumulation of suspense." Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "The main trouble with the Evil One as a protagonist is that his opposition never looks very convincing—and like its predecessor, Omen II is based on a rather lame structure in which successive individuals discover something amiss about Damien and then meet an inexorably bloody end." Box office The film opened at number one at the US box