The Omega Man (1971) - film review

Robert Neville believes he is the last surviving human of a worldwide catastrophe.  Two years ago, a biological war between the Soviet Union and China unleashed a deadly plague that has wiped out most of humanity.  Those who were not killed were transformed into technology-hating mutants who are forced to shun daylight and commit themselves to destroying the last vestiges of civilisation.  Neville only just managed to avoid the effects of the plague by injecting himself with a serum just as the Apocalypse was unfolding.  Now, alone, he roams the deserted streets of Los Angeles by day and is holed up in his penthouse apartment by night.  One day, he is captured by the mutants and taken to their leader Matthias, who sentences him to death.  Just as Neville is about to be burnt alive, he is rescued by another unmutated survivor.  His elation on discovering that he is not after all the last human is short-lived.   Unless he can develop a serum to prevent the remaining humans from succumbing to the effects of the plague mankind will soon be extinct.  Matthias and his homicidal mutants are determined that he shall fail...

Richard Matheson’s classic sci-fi novel I Am Legend is better served by this film than the previous schlock Italian adaptation L’Ultimo Uomo Della Terra (a.k.a. The Last Man On Earth) (1964) but falls short of achieving the potential of the novel’s horrifying premise.  The Omega Man was one of a spate of Apocalypse-themed sci-fi movies that cheered audiences in the early 1970s, most of whom were probably of the mind that they were shortly to perish in a global nuclear war.  The film was not particularly well-received when it was first released and today it appears horribly dated with its distinctly unfrightening hippie mutant zombies and Charlton Heston struggling hard to show that he can justify putting the word ’actor’ on his CV. 

Despite the best efforts of Heston and director Boris Sagal, it takes a while for The Omega Man to fall apart completely and degenerate into a kitsch monster movie.  The film’s first third is actually quite effective and sets up the premise brilliantly, with eerie shots of a deserted Los Angeles street inter-cut with concise flashbacks explaining how the disaster came about.  Unfortunately, it all falls apart when Matthias and his gang of black-cowled hippie albinos (dig those hairstyles and black sunglasses, man) appear and start trying to look as menacing as an albino in a black cowl and dark sunglasses can be.  Just imagine how much scarier the film would have been if George A. Romero had got his hands on it.  Unfortunately, The Omega Man’s fear quotient approximates more to that of Sesame Street than that of Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Thankfully, it isn’t all bad - the film’s kitsch appeal and allegorical subtext prevents it from being a total washout.  Rosalind Cash’s performance out-classes Heston’s by several orders of magnitude (not that that should come as a surprise) and you can’t help wishing that she was the star of the film.  After a stumbling middle section (which is unintentionally hilarious in a few places), the film collapses spectacularly at the end with a man-handled denouement that is almost too embarrassing to watch.  The Omega Man is not a great film for those who take their sci-fi seriously or for those who like to take their Charlton Heston in light, easy to swallow doses, but it is unavoidable for diehard aficionados of badly written sci-fi fare from the 1970s, the decade that good taste and typewriter correction fluid forgot.

© Steve Chandler 2011

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