Yeesh.
I just watched The Omega Man for the first time in many years.
I never much liked that movie, and it hasn’t improved with age.
Too bad, because I love Charlton Heston’s “B” movies.
The guy was bigger than life, which is necessary if you’re going to play Moses, but he also had a slightly loony dark side, which was never more evident than when he was grimacing his way through some ‘70s dystopian sci-fi satire where he was contractually obligated to bare his chest, make out with a chick half his age, and die in a blaze of glory.
I’m talking about B-movie classics like Soylent Green, the first two Planet of the Apes movies and the aforementioned The Omega Man.
Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes?
Wonderful. Timeless. I loved them as a kid, and they fall into that small category of films that somehow get better as I become more jaded. They have style. I don’t mean the accidental grindhouse grooviness of anything made in the ‘70s, but a coherent cinematic vision.
The Omega Man…not so much.
Now, The Omega Man had a good pedigree.
It was based on Richard Matheson’s classic novel I Am Legend, which is the source book for every subsequent tale of zombie apocalypse, including my own Xombies novels.
Before The Omega Man, I Am Legend had already been made into a movie called The Last Man On Earth, with Vincent Price.
That 1964 film was so crude as to be almost unwatchable (though I liked it as a kid), but the concept of zombies banging down doors was potent enough to inspire George Romero to make his own micro-budgeted masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, in 1969.
Bingo!
After the surprise success of NOTLD, it’s no wonder that Hollywood took a second look at I Am Legend. Only this time they would do it right: in color, with a decent budget, and a major star.
Thus, in 1971, The Omega Man, starring Charlton “Moses” Heston, was born.
Wow.
Where to begin?
Okay, how about with the terrible, terrible music?
For a movie that dares to show us clips of Woodstock, this has to be the worst soundtrack ever. It’s as if the studio ran out of time or money for an original score, and simply borrowed incidental music from random television shows.
The Omega Man begins with beautiful, spooky shots of Heston cruising the post-apocalyptic streets of LA in a red convertible. Awesome, eerie–perfect.
But then this upbeat, romantic credits music kicks in, and suddenly it’s as if we’re watching a Quinn-Martin Production.
It’s so lame that we can’t help but wonder if there’s not a satirical purpose behind it: perhaps the filmmakers are cleverly juxtaposing banal TV conventions with a shockingly real vision of doom?
No. They are just tone-deaf. The same musical slop is ladled over every action scene in the movie, turning what might otherwise be slightly scary into unintentional cornball comedy.
To make matters worse, every time Charlton Heston’s character plays music, it’s the worst kind of easy-listening cocktail-bar lite jazz, which even in the ‘70s had been mostly banished to dentists’ waiting rooms.
Obviously this is a signifier of an earlier generation, the postwar, pre-psychedelic world, of which Heston is the last survivor.
We’re supposed to believe this is his taste, even though he obsessively watches the film Woodstock in a deserted theater, repeating the inanities of the stoned participants.
Considering his penchant for mowing down bad guys with a machine gun, he’d more likely be watching Patton. Or Dirty Harry.
But that’s part of the movie’s clunky message: hippies were the precursors to the technology-hating mutants that are at war with Heston’s Civilized Man…yet even he is susceptible to their wacky notions of peace and love.
And will ultimately die for them.
The mutants, right. Gotta love those hipster mutants.
When the producers of The Omega Man hired Charlton Heston off the set of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, did they also get a deal on that movie’s hooded, blister-faced mutant overlords? See, I have a theory that the two movies were shot simultaneously, so the mutant extras could just shuttle back and forth between productions—maybe with Heston driving the mutant bus.
These mutants are easily the least-scary zombies ever committed to film.
They run around in their robes like nuns in a Monty Python skit, falling out of windows, dodging cars, and catching fire in the funniest way possible. Everything they do is slapstick gold, but I’ll say this for
them: they are racially integrated.
Even though the black one hates The Man and carries a spear, his militancy is tempered by the zombie-mutant ideals of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin: no guns, no bombs, no technology of any kind.
Except for catapults.
And sewing machines to make those nifty robes.
And sunglasses.
If Heston’s character is the reactionary Last Man, then the mutants are the Last Mansons—violent anarchists who would destroy civilization in the name of saving it. In the end, both extremes must be annihilated in order for the sensible middle (a group of refugees hiding out in the hills) to survive.
Which, of course, means a big, bloody, ham-tastic death scene for Charlton Heston.
Only this time let’s REALLY lay on the symbolism: our hero not only dies to save mankind, he practically gets crucified…but before dying he manages to donate his vaccinated blood to the refugees, thus ensuring that the New World will include a Church of Chuck.
Alpha and Omega—ohhh, I get it!
Hallelujah.
