Filmmaking

SPOILER ALERT. This is a review of THE OMEGA MAN from 1971 starring Chartlon Heston. It contains mega-spoilers. You’ve been warned….

I saw I Am Legend when it came out months ago. I liked it okay. It suffered in that not much happened…it started to get exciting, then it suddenly ended. It was, overall, disappointing, but not a bad film.

I’ve never read the novel it was based on called I Am Legend. The Omega Man is the second film version of the story and starred Charlton Heston. Vincent Price stars in a version called The Last Man on Earth which I plan on watching as well.

The Omega Man is just bad. Bad, bad, and more bad. The plot is silly, and apparently it strays wildly from the novel, which is actually supposed to be pretty good. Heston plays Neville, a military doctor/scientist (like Will Smith in the new version) who is immune to a disease that seems to be the result of massive biological warfare during some sort of global conflict that started out as a war between Russia and China. They don’t go much into this, only a few news clips as flashbacks. Neville is living in a home by himself, the only man left on earth. Except, he’s not at all. Not only is he not alone, a band of weirdo hippies with pale skin and weird greyish-lips inhabit the neighborhood and throw wild parties while burning things.

Yes, that’s right, instead of scary vampire-like beasts as in I Am Legend, it’s weird hippy looking people wearing robes with hoods. They look like a weirdo cult that never goes in the sun, and it’s not one bit scary, creepy, or anything even remotely bad. They come off as lame, cheesy, and merely annoying as neighbors. I guess we were supposed to fear these people, but it just falls on its face completely. You see them at the very start of the film, so you never get the sense of lonliness that you get in I Am Legend. Will Smith is utterly miserable and alone. He’s a man who is barely tolerating the fact that he’s the last man alive. We see him apprenshive of some sort of beasts that come out at night, but we don’t see them until well into the film, and when we do- they’re just that- beasts. Not annoying neighbors who have loud parties and look tame as can be.

So, the baddies are laughable. Big flaw there. The storyline itself is tedious. Heston is dealing with the annoyance of the “family” as they call themselves for nearly 2 years. Somehow, he runs into a group of seemingly healthy people. In I Am Legend, Smith confronts others, but it’s a group of 2…in this one, there’s a black woman with a massive absurd looking afro, some hippy-looking idiot guy, and a bunch of children. They have the disease too but are healthy and can come out in the light (I must have missed a few mins there, because I didn’t get the explanation as to why they could be in the light.) So, at no time is Heston actually alone, outside of a trip to the department store to get some new tracksuits. And can I just ask- how did Heston attain the status of a legend of sorts? I haven’t seen him in much, but if his acting here is a taste of what he has to offer, wow. Just wow. He’s really bad. The writing is terrible, so that surely doesn’t help, but even with the bad writing he comes off horribly. We’re supposed to fear the weird family people, but Heston never even flinches. He acts like he’s just having a swell time, no worries in the world. Which made it all seem pointless. No passion, no fear, nothing to even worry about as a viewer. And what is with Heston’s mouth/teeth? He smiles and I kept thinking, wow this guy is ugly. He has the ugliest smile of any legend I’ve ever seen. Never noticed it before, but it was distracting when he put on one of those massive goofy smiles that didn’t exactly match the mood he should have been in if he were fighting for his life.

There were other problems with the movie- they had numerous shots of a desolate LA. Except it wasn’t at all desolate. They didn’t have CGI back then, so no idea how they would have done it…but it was sort of funny to see sweeping video interspersed with still shots meant to look like video of busy LA streets with cars all over the place. It was very obvious. There’s a scene where Heston rides a motorbike around to get away from the baddies, but it’s so obviously a stunt double with slightly different color hair. Special effects were harder back then, so we’ll give them some credit for trying.

The big question was- what the was point of the film? The leader of the family is a dude named Matthias and he kept going on about how evil technology was (basically), and how the world lead to their current state and disease. He had no use for Heston’s character, because he was part of the modern world and weapons and such. I wasn’t sure what the true message was, as the overlong monologues got annoying to even listen to. On top of that, when all the baddies are outside Heston’s house trying to shoot fireballs into the window, why didn’t he just start shooting them dead one by one? He goes to the window at one point and shoots a few bullets to get them to go back into the darkness, but that’s it. Why not kill those who are trying to kill you?

There’s a love affair with the massive afroed black woman, but it came off lamely, since they meet and the next minute their hopping into bed and calling each other baby. It was very annoying when Heston lets the woman go out alone to get new dresses for their hopeful dash into the mountains. There was the goal of trying to find a serum to cure the disease, and they sort of do that, but the good times don’t last as the family returns to attack again. The ending isn’t horrible, but it’s not at all satisfying or even rational.

I’ve always heard good things about The Omega Man. I have no idea why. This movie is awful. I Am Legend wasn’t a gem, but it’s a glimmering diamond compared to The Omega Man, no doubt.