The 1970s File: The one with Charlton Heston

 

 

Title: The Omega Man

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

Having just finished my No-Good Very Bad Movies 1980s lineup, there’s really only one place to go from here, which is to cover the 1970s. Surprisingly, I really haven’t done a lot of ‘70s stuff for this feature, if only because I already dredged much of the worst of the decade in my other features, especially Space 1979. (Heck, I reviewed Cross Of Iron here, which is actually one of the best ‘70s movies I’ve covered.) Even more surprisingly, the one that convinced me to do this now is one that I hadn’t really thought about until it came up in my rental queue. I present no less than one of the most famous and/ or notorious movies of the decade, one which people would probably expect me to love or hate. Here is The Omega Man, and I’ll say right off the bat that I still don’t know what to make of it.

Our story begins with our protagonist Neville cruising the streets of a seemingly deserted city. He hurries to get back home after dark, however, where he is met by a group of strange assailants wearing Medieval-looking robes. It turns out that he is the lone uninfected survivor of a plague that has left most of the human population either dead or turned into light-sensitive mutants. He has set himself up in a second- or third-floor apartment that we will see is really more vulnerable than a ground-level dwelling would be, where he searches for a cure to the plague when not fighting with the mutants. The other side of the feud is a charismatic leader named Matthias, who has established a sort of Luddite cult dedicated to removing the vestiges of the former civilization. In the midst of their inconclusive battles, Neville discovers another survivor, a spunky non-white lady. Inevitably, romance blooms, and she introduces him to a colony who have sensibly relocated to the countryside. But the plague is still claiming their lives and those of the mutants. It’s up to Neville to save the remnants of humanity, but will the mutants allow themselves to be cured?

The Omega Man was a 1971 post-apocalyptic science film by producer Walter Seltzer and screenwriters John and Joyce Corrington. It was the second adaptation of the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (see Duel), following the 1964 film The Last Man On Earth and preceding the 2007 film of the same name, and in most respects the loosest treatment of the source material. The film was directed by Boris Sagal, a Ukrainian-born filmmaker best known for television including the Twilight Zone episode “The Silence”. The late Charlton Heston starred as the protagonist Neville, the same name as the protagonist in the novel, with Rosalind Cash as the love interest Lisa and character actor Anthony Zerbe as Matthias. The music was composed by Ron Grainer, whose work included the Dr. Who theme. The finished film was distributed by Warner Bros. It was a likely commercial success, with a box office estimated as at least $4 million. While it received mixed reviews from contemporary and later critics, it has remained popular and readily available a cult film. Seltzer went on to produce Soylent Green, also starring Heston, before retiring in 1976. Sagal died in 1981 in an on-set accident. Cash died of cancer in 1995, at age 56. Zerbe turned 86 in May 2022.

For my experiences, this is another case of a movie I grew up aware of (I have to mention the Simpsons parody) without seeing it or being interested in doing so. What stands out all the more is that I can’t recall ever making the connection to I Am Legend on my own, and I definitely had read the book at an early date. As with many of these things, I only got to it relatively recently, more or less out of curiosity. That encounter just left me vaguely baffled, not only by how they got this from the book but all the more by how it had stayed seemingly popular and certainly relevant for so long. That was where things stood until I reviewed The Last Man On Earth, and after that, I had to come back to it.

Moving forward, this movie is truly an egregious case of an Anachronistic Outlier, more specifically the peculiar variety that feels like an egregious example of a period that it’s really barely in at all. In this case, there are so many ludicrous 1970s cliches that it’s tempting to cut the Gordian Knot and allow that the cliches came from here, which is certainly plausible given the movie’s influence. This includes plenty of things that are by all means good when considered on their own merits, including a visual style that genuinely bridges the ‘60s and ‘70s, a generally groovy vibe from the supporting characters and a solid, understated performance from Heston. Unfortunately, the action sequences are among the things that don’t hold up so well. To me, they feel frenetic without being surreal and garish without being shocking. The upshot is that there was at least one extended period when I simply tuned out the film. (It's all the more disappointing considered the uncharacteristic savagery of "The Silence".) Then what’s absolutely wrong to the point of distraction is the music, on a level far beyond the cheap, synthesizer-heavy soundtracks of lesser and generally somewhat later films. It’s mostly a competent, vaguely introspective sort of smooth jazz that would have fit certain scenes, especially between Neville and Lisa, repeated at the most random and entirely inappropriate moments. What’s baffling and unacceptable is that this is very obviously the work of an accomplished composer who had in fact done good work in the sci fi genre before. (Oh, yeah, Grainer died in 1981.) Maybe he was struggling through the transition period the film was made in, but the difference between a love scene and a shootout is not something that changed over time.

Beyond these problems, what we are offered is oddly inoffensive, even factoring in that it should never have been rated anything but R. As hard as it may be to accept the liberties with the source material, it is very soundly established that Neville is in the right. He’s looking for a cure for a disease that’s killing the survivors and at least some of the mutants. Even more strikingly, he rarely if ever kills any of the mutants when they aren’t actively trying to kill him. It’s the mutants’ side that starts to feel like a letdown. Matthias and his followers aren’t drinking blood, eating people or really doing anything violent or disturbing outside of the Wile E. Coyote schemes to kill Neville. (Extra points are in order for using an actual siege engine…) It’s their quasi-religious fanaticism, not any unambiguous effect of the disease, that makes them dangerous. Even on that front, when viewed from a modern standpoint, they are no more sinister or incomprehensible than an unusually crazed band of anti-vaxxers. (I was happy how long I had gone without writing about that subject, until I did the magnetic vaccine post.) On still further consideration, the only reason there’s a conflict at all is that Neville won’t simply lie low as the other survivors have. With all those parameters in mind, the (pretty much literally) tortured metaphors of the finale are simply one more thing that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really go anywhere either.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the opening. It all starts with Neville driving through the city as the credits roll. At first, it could be a perfectly normal scene, if not for the music, which sets an appropriately somber if not quite ominous mood. Around the 30-second mark, however, we start to see bodies and debris, still fairly subdued. (All is in accord with the “tidy apocalypse” conceit I have commented on with Night of the Comet and The Quiet Earth.) What really stands out is that this is as often as not shown in distance shots where the hero is increasingly dwarfed by the empty cityscape. It’s a bold move to make when handling a star remembered as an iconic large ham. Bolder still is the evident assumption that they had cleared the field of routine traffic and pedestrians, which wouldn’t seem like a big deal if you haven’t seen it go hilariously wrong in the likes of Zombie. It’s a promising opening that really does show off the best points of what’s to come, and as such, everything a good credit roll can be.

In closing, what I’m left with is not so much explaining the rating as how it reconciles with all the very deserved heat I’ve laid down. What it really comes down to is that this is another case of a movie that didn’t belong here apart from its notoriety. Sure, you can call it a “bad” movie both in its own right and as an embodiment of its era, but just try to beat me for bragging rights on bad 1970s movies. I’ve reviewed Laser Blast, Planet Of Dinosaurs, War Of The Planets, Prey and ZPG, and there are still 1970s movies I’ve seen that I consider too bad to review. After all that, this is a movie I just can’t trash, and it will be very obvious that I tried. It may be weird, it may be dated, it may have a lot of things that don’t make the slightest bit of sense, but we’re talking about the goddam Seventies here. Sometimes, you have to look at the positive for the sake of your sanity. The bottom line here is that if this movie hadn’t gotten made, we might not have Star Wars, Alien or Dawn Of The Dead either. That alone is enough for a pass from me, and with that, I can rest.