- 1971's The Omega Man gets a couple of things right. For one, it casts Charlton Heston as the last man on Earth, which is obviously appropriate. It is also one of the earliest films to feature extensive shots of a nearly abandoned city, an approach that has since become a staple of post-apocalyptic cinema. The film's opening uses this setting to establish precisely the right mood, as Robert Neville (Heston) tears through an unspecified urban wasteland (it's L.A.) in his convertible, driving on the wrong side of the corpse-strewn streets and ignoring stop lights completely. It's a striking introduction to a lonely man, made even more interesting when he suddenly stops to fire his handy machine gun at a vague shadow. Maybe he's not as alone as we thought.
- As we soon learn, Neville shares the world with a group of plague-altered humans who call themselves "The Family." Clothed in black robes and sunglasses, The Family are a cultish group of light-sensitive albinos who, under the leadership of a former newscaster named Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), systematically destroy everything that has to do with the "old ways." Needless to say, they appreciate neither Neville's attempts to eradicate them nor his adherence to pre-war culture, so they spend their evenings laying siege to his palatial home. While these nighttime assaults are a near-comic exercise in futility against
Heston's Neville's well-fortified and fully armed penthouse, The Family finally succeeds in capturing him during a daytime excursion. Will Neville be summarily executed in the middle of Dodger stadium, or will a blaxplotation heroine named Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and her mad biker assistant Dutch (Paul Koslo) rush to his rescue? Wait, what?!
- And therein lies the problem with The Omega Man. While its goofiness works wonders in establishing Neville as a unhinged man who can recite every line from Woodstock and who dresses up like a dandy to play chess against a bust of Caesar, this same campy quality works to the detriment of the more serious scenes. Thus, when Lisa turns around to reveal her sudden transformation, the effect is more Michael Jackson's Thriller than an actual thriller. It also doesn't help that the eerie vampires of Matheson's source novella have been replaced by something from the cover of "Modern Druid Magazine." Despite the film's final shot of a dying Neville in a Christ-like pose (is that in Heston's contract?), I would prefer to remember Neville as the strange, cynical, apocalyptic bastard he was in life. Unfortunately, I would prefer to forget much of the rest of this bizarre and ultimately unfulfilling film.
- As mentioned, this was adapted from I Am Legend.
- The main theme from this film was borrowed by Stereolab in their song, "Margerine Melodie." Yeah, that's weird.
