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[#Horror #reTweet] The #Omega #Man (1971)
The Omega Man (1971)
By Scott Shoyer
But THE OMEGA MAN was something different, and I was immediately grabbed by it. I spent the summer wishing I was Robert Neville, and I would get up extra early to ride around the empty streets of my neighbourhood, pretending to machine gun mutants hiding inside the abandoned buildings. The appeal of being alone, of no longer having to go to school or obey the rules or run away from bullies or listen to my parents’ marriage disintegrating was compelling. A part of it remains so, not just for me but for many people; there’s a reason that the post-apocalyptic, sole survivor trope has survived for so long.
His nights, meanwhile, are spent within his suburban fortress, ignoring the cries of the vampires outside, “Come out Neville!”, and alternating between trying to comprehend the disease and fighting his alcohol-fuelled depression – and his memories of his wife and daughter, lost to the plague as the world fell apart while he remained normal.
There have been numerous attempts to adapt the novel for film. The first was THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964), starring Vincent Price (my review is here), and while it took some liberties with the story, it was both bleak and influential (I couldn’t help but think how much it might have influenced Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD several years later). Later of course many post-apocalyptic movies could trace their influence to the novel, though only Will Smith’s I AM LEGEND would show its true connections to the book.
Charlton Heston had read the novel while on a flight to California, and thought it would be ideal for a film adaptation, unaware of Vincent Price’s earlier effort. It was the late Sixties and early Seventies, when Heston would star in the first of a quartet of big-budget science fiction movies: PLANET OF THE APES, it’s sequel BENEATH, and the not-exactly-a-barrel-of-laughs-movie SOYLENT GREEN. And then there was THE OMEGA MAN, which had started out under the title I AM LEGEND, as well as being more faithful to the original story. However, once they began deviating from the original story, the title underwent a change as well (Matheson himself has been quoted as saying the movie was so far removed that he didn’t feel bothered – damning with faint praise?).
The movie opens with a shot of Los Angeles (rather than spend money on huge sets, the producers chose to shoot in the city early on weekends, though occasionally a distant shot of cars or working traffic lights still crept through), and Robert Neville (Heston) driving in his convertible, putting in an 8-track tape and listening to A Summer Place – before suddenly braking and machine-gunning a shadowy figure in some building.
As the credits roll, we see the rest of the city, decaying and corpse-strewn. After the credits, Heston crashes his car (He looks around and quips, “There’s never a cop around when you need one.”) but soon picks up another from a showroom, before popping over to watch WOODSTOCK in a theatre (“Great show, held over for a third straight year.”), though as he sits in there mouthing all the dialogue, you figure he’s probably sorry the Apocalypse didn’t occur after the Age of the Videocassette.
He emerges, not realising how late it is, and rushes home before the sun sets. He makes it to his barricaded townhouse – just as strange figures in black cowls attack him with fire. He makes it inside, shooting down his attackers and starting up the spotlights surrounding his residence, and driving back the rest of his robed enemies. He settles in for the night, playing chess with a bust of Caesar and putting on some soft jazz – but in flashbacks we see that the devastation around him is due to biological warfare gone awry.
Outside, we see scores of pale-skinned fanatics burning books, artwork, machinery. This is the Family, the other survivors of the holocaust: light-sensitive, albino-skinned fanatical mutates who are destroying all traces of the society that left them looking like chalk-faced Westboro Baptist Church members.
Their leader, Matthias (Anthony Zerbe, STAR TREK: INSURRECTION) speaks with his second in command Zachary (Lincoln Kilpatrick, FORTRESS) about how their nemesis has survived another attempt on him (“One creature, caught. Caught in a place he cannot stir from in the dark, alone, outnumbered hundreds to one. Nothing to live for but his memories, nothing to live with but his gadgets, his cars, his guns and gimmicks…”).
In a flashback, we see Matthias as a TV news commentator, reporting on the spread of a virus unleashed in a war between China and the USSR (screenwriter Joyce Corrington, who held a doctorate in chemistry, felt this was a more plausible scenario than the bacterial infection in Matheson’s novel). Neville, a doctor and a colonel, is transporting an experimental vaccine by helicopter when his pilot is struck by the plague and crashes. Injured, infected, Neville injects himself, and obviously it worked, since he’s alive and not wearing castoff costumes from THE NAME OF THE ROSE.
But Neville has become the living Antichrist to the Family, and as he spends his days searching the city for their hideout, they spend their nights trying to kill him, albeit only with primitive, self-made weapons like catapults (Matthias’s comrade Zachary favours using guns and cannons to knock Neville out of his “honky Paradise”, but Matthias, realising the movie would finish in ten minutes if they did that, Just Says No).
One day, while out on the hunt, Neville looks at some department store mannequins, his solitude drawing him to one (sorry, pal, I don’t think they’re anatomically correct), he sees another of them move! It’s a black woman (Rosalind Cash, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI), and after fruitlessly chasing her through the streets, stops in a bar for a drink… and is promptly caught by the Family. After a kangaroo court they take him to Dodger Stadium to burn him alive. But before the Joan of Arc Cosplay commences, the spotlights come on long enough for him to be freed by two young people: the black woman, Lisa, and her friend Dutch (Paul Koslo, who played Limpy in another cult favourite, 1970’s NAM’S ANGELS, aka THE LOSERS).
They take Neville up to their sanctuary in the surrounding hills, where children, who proved most resistant to the plague, survive. They fear Neville (“Between the Family at night, and you in the daytime blasting at anything that moves, man, we had to stay low”) but need his expertise because Lisa’s brother Ritchie (Eric Laneuville, who has maintained a consistent career since as a TV director on shows like GRIMM) is starting to succumb to the plague, becoming pale and light sensitive.
But Neville reveals that he’s immune, and could possibly develop a serum from his blood to make them all immune. As he works on the cure, Neville and Lisa grow closer, but the Family remain ever vigilant, waiting for Neville to slip… like say, when he forgets to fuel up in the generators to keep the lights going…
I’m not going to say that THE OMEGA MAN is flawless. Watching a pristine copy of it now, you can see the cheapness of some of the effects. It’s also dated in some of the “groovy” concessions to the age, as well as the Blaxploitation elements in Lisa’s Foxy Mama attitude and dialogue (and the Biblical, Christian allusions). The interracial romance, however, is possibly more progressive than a big budget movie might want to risk today, forty-plus years later (Cash was uneasy before her love scene with Charlton Heston, saying “It feels strange to screw Moses.”) There’s also a flash of nudity from Miss Cash, something which, like the swearing, I didn’t expect after being so familiar with the movie via TV broadcasts.
But there’s a fair bit of action, Heston achieves his larger-than-life, gun-toting icon status with a variety of weapons, there’s a pervading creepy, downbeat atmosphere throughout, lightened with moments of black humour and action. Anthony Zerbe makes for a compelling and charismatic villain (and you can almost sympathise with the Family’s attitude, given how the actions of men like Neville contributed to the near-extermination of humanity) and the empty, litter-strewn streets of downtown LA looks suitably authentic.
Deggsy’s Summary:
Director: Boris Sagal
Plot: 5 out of 5 stars
Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains
Reviewed by Deggsy. The Lowmega Man
Filed under: Deggsy’s Corner, Movie Reviews, New Posting
October 4, 2014 at 05:44PM
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