Well hello and welcome to Day 1 of Charlton Heston week and
I find we could start off with a little sci-fi. A different take on The Last Man on Earth
based on the Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend with a bit more of an
edge. So gas up your generator, maintain
your defenses and execute your Second Amendments. This
is The Omega Man.
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| NO RIDERS!!!! |
There’s never a spoiler
around when you need one…
Taking away from the 1964 sci-fi/horror movie The Last Man
on Earth, from TV director Boris Sagal (Mr. Lucky, The Emperor’s Clothes, Peter
Gunn, Adventures in Paradise, Dr. Kildare and The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters)
and treated the infection outbreak in a different fashion. Biological warfare of warring nations of
Russia and China spread this manmade plague throughout the world. Military
based with not only the Martial Law of an entire nation but this virulent disease
spreading it all ages and nationality, Colonel Robert Neville (Charlton
Heston of Arrowhead, Naked Jungle, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Touch of Evil
and Planet of the Apes) takes a helicopter over to the next staging
area with an experimental vaccine. His pilot
gets violently sick and crashes the copter.
Barely able to tumble his way from the wreckage and realizing he too now
has the virus, Neville injects himself with the untested vaccine in the hopes
he can survive.
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| Stop playing Bread or it is two to the coconut! |
Now Neville is all alone with no one on his side. A few hundred or so of survivors are scarred
and deformed from the plague call themselves The Family (Has a nice Manson ring
to it, right?) who can only journey out at night due to have an intense
photophobia to light now and their leaves them almost albino. They believe that since science and
technology cause the war that their punishment is to do without such tools and
machinery and that Neville is basically the devil that brought this punishment
to them and they must cleanse him…with fire.
Well heck makes about as much sense as Scientology.
Almost 3 years he has managed this struggle against “The
Family” hiding in his pillbox apartment with a private elevator, security
cameras, flood lights and enough firearms to start a week long siege. The man had to sandbag his patio and put up
barb wire just to get some peace of mind which and let’s be fair given the
scenario is slipping. Their leader
Matthias (Anthony Zerbe of The Streets of San Francisco, Mannix, Rooster
Cogburn, Harry O, How the West Was Won and The Dead Zone) leads his flock into
what he believes to be the best course of action against the past and burn it
all down.
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| For your crimes against humanity you will burn, Eminem! |
Yes, now I have a little input on the film and yes I am
babbling on as usual. Hammer Films was
attempting their own adaptation of I am Omega with the title “The Night
Creatures” which was written by Richard Matheson himself but apparently the
project was too graphic with its violence and too much retuning of it made
investors leave thus the project died.
Neville favored the Smith & Wesson M76 submachine
gun. A machine gun that was primarily
going to be used for covert ops in Vietnam but the Swedish government put a ban
on selling these fires due to that very same war. Primarily it went to police and civilians as
a whole the US Navy scrapped any further use of it. He was also accustomed to using his BAR
(Browning automatic rifle) with an infrared scope to just clip and wound “The
Family” members from a distance. His siege
warfare tactics were surprisingly humane overall and no sudden homemade nitroglycerin
bombs or hot tar dropped from above.
35 mm anamorphic Panavision was the order of the day. A few crane shots, lots of exterior dolly and
the stadium scene alone must have been a nightmare to film in Dodger
Stadium. A dark apocalyptic view of the
world with the last Atomic Age man to fight against it, Neville was a ballsy
fella.
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