You know what I said in my review of Spontaneous about our seeking out media or themes in media that relate to our pandemic situation as a means of finding meaning in it.
Well, I watched The Omega Man.
The Omega Man is definitely one of those movies popular enough to have left a mark on pop culture, but not so popular that it is much well-known outside of particular cinephiles or fans of 70s sci-fi/horror/apocalypse movies. The same could be said about its’ sister film from two years later, also a sci-fi thriller starring Charlton Heston and produced by Walter Seltzer, Soylent Green -remembered for its twist of a classic final line and little else (these two films along with Planet of the Apes form a kind of trilogy of Heston-fronted apocalypse movies). The Omega Man though doesn’t even have the notoriety of a classic ending; the film is referenced and parodied occasionally for its plot and certain aesthetics (notably in a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment), but is not as widespread or singularly iconic as the movie where Heston yells about Soylent Green being people.
But it is significant in some ways. It was the second adaptation of Richard Mathesons’ I Am Legend, albeit not a terribly good one (though I understand none of them really are), and it was one of the early modern studio films to depict a particular kind of nuclear fallout -one where civilization has been eradicated, but its’ fossils are still there. It takes place in a near empty Los Angeles full of deserted buildings and houses, nothing on the road, debris here and there, but a solitude without; the kind of scene recalled by a movie like 28 Days Later -fitting given how I Am Legend is famously one of the progenitors of zombie fiction.
The only person left not rendered a nocturnal albino by the plague that resulted from a devastating biological war is Hestons’ Robert Neville, who is essentially the conservative Hestons’ own approximation of a perfect masculine specimen to be left at the end of the world -being both an exceptionally trained army colonel (we also see via flashback that he was a pilot) and a brilliant scientist. He keeps a vast array of firearms on hand (worth pointing out this was around the time Heston become a fierce gun rights advocate) to defend against the “mutants” as these plague victims are identified; he is quick-witted and tactile enough to have injected himself with an experimental vaccine before the plague overtook him, and later in the film he is even seen to be very sexually available and viable, despite believing to have been for so long the last man on earth. That vaccine is gone, so his blood holds the cure to the plague -he is quite literally a saviour of humanity, this most manly of men. And it’s kind of hilarious at times, our avatar to this world being a man with almost no vulnerabilities or emotional scarring.
Because we know firsthand now a fraction of the reality he’s interacting with. We’ve experienced the solitude and hopelessness, even with the modern technologies for connection that the world The Omega Man was made in did not. Our clue that Neville may be losing some grip of his sanity (or perhaps is his desperation to maintain it, depending on your view) is his one-sided conversations and games with a statue in the secure apartment complex he has set up base in. It is the only consideration the movie makes towards his psychological state, because anything further would damage his image as an alpha male surviving in the ruins of civilization. And this hurts the character because it renders him extremely one-note -and it’s not necessarily a performance issue. Heston has played very human characters surviving in dire circumstances before and done so well. This is down to how Neville is presented on the page by screenwriters John and Joyce Corrington, possibly with input from Heston himself. I doubt that Matheson’s protagonist was so rigidly dull.
This character direction though isn’t the only thing that tempers the premise of The Omega Man. For the ominous science-fiction of it and the iconography it has inspired (the pale white people with hoods, scars, and sunglasses), the movie itself isn’t all that interesting -and certainly less frightening than I anticipated in picking it for a Halloween review. The Family, which is the name for the cult of plague victims in L.A., descends upon Neville far earlier than is perhaps narratively appropriate -though again, he’s not very interesting company so I kind of get this. They are of course the most compelling part of the movie, both in their instantly memorable look, and their weird religion, which aims to wipe out all technology that conceivably led to their fate -Neville, a scientist, they see as a symbol of this very technology, and thus why their sights are set on him. Their leader Matthias, a former TV newscaster played by Anthony Zerbe in the only really good performance of the film, is weirdly an imposing villain (which I attribute to Zerbe’s menacing eyebrows and square-jawed graveness), and he has a particular gravitas whenever he is called upon by the script to explain something for Neville. As other characters begin to fall victim to mutation, and the Family’s own humanity is brought into question when salvation becomes a distinct possibility, they only become more engaging as villains and victims.
Certainly they inspire more fascination than the tribe of hippies, also introduced too early, who rescue Neville and provide hope for the human race. Their only point of interest is in relation to Neville and the movies’ hard masculine undertones. Aside from the forthright and commanding leader Lisa (Rosalind Cash), who is also of course a love interest for Neville despite having at least one other man her own age around, the survivors are seen to be a bit incompetent –Paul Koslo’s Dutch is straight up comic relief. And given their interracial make-up and timely fashion senses, this group is very coded as counterculture youth in need of Neville’s brilliance and influence. He steers them forward to rejuvenating humanity, and the one kid who disobeys him by reaching out to the Family in empathy to save them, is killed for it. On that note, there is something dismaying to the fact this films’ small cast includes multiple black characters (this kid, Matthias’ right-hand, Lisa), all of whom either die or succumb to the plague.
But that plague –maybe we should talk about that in the year of our lord 2020. No doubt the greatest present factor that clouds ones’ judgment of this movie and the grim apocalypse it illustrates. Because it was made in the 1970s, The Omega Mans’ pandemic is of course borne out of Cold War conflicts, and by the time of the movie has decimated much of humanity. Watching such a thing now is pretty bleak to put it mildly, especially presented as it is here as a distinctly science-fiction idea. And as such it has no real concern for the victims of such an ailment, who as before mentioned, the film doesn’t quite identify as humans -at least not the group of those we see. More disappointing though is that the film doesn’t have anything to say on the subject beyond it just being a detail of the premise. To see a film so casually depict the aftermath of a deadly pandemic is a shock about now, especially when relevant commentary seems so easy to find even in movies not directly about such a thing. It’s jarring as just a backdrop, and I think this in itself actually speaks volumes of how the pandemic has changed our perceptions. In avoiding a discussion on its’ plague, The Omega Man highlights the effects of the one that we’re living through.
For as fascinating a study as it is though, I don’t think The Omega Man is a terribly good movie. Boris Sagal’s direction is hardly noteworthy, there’s not the level of creativity on display this kind of story would suggest, and the repetitive score often sounds like its’ just an instrumental rendition of “I Me Mine”. However, it does spark more interest on my part for I Am Legend, a curiosity at exactly what Matheson was getting at, and how it was so influential a work. As for Charlton Heston, this might be one of the most Heston-y movies he made during his time as a middle-aged action star; and it’s largely because of that that it cannot be accepted seriously on its own terms.
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