The Omega Man July 20, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , trackbackWhen I saw The Omega Man as a little kid, it was the coolest movie imaginable. In a plague-devastated USA, Chuck Heston, tough, cool ”last man alive”, prowls the deserted streets of downtown Los Angeles to Ron Grainer’s funky score. He has his pick of whatever he wants: clothes, food, drink, he can drive through downtown at 80 mph and run through every stop sign he sees. And if that isn’t enough, at night he holds up in his townhouse-fortress, and battles hordes of crazy mutants with his arsenal of automatic weapons! I remember being disappointed when it turned out there were other survivors too, and the movie got a little sidetracked from mutant machine-gun mayhem, and developed into a we-can-find-a-cure story.
As an older and wiser (oh, definitely!) movie fan, I watched the film again recently, and loved it just as much. The film’s shortcomings were only too apparent this time round, but the cheesy action, creepy set pieces, and deliciously evil Anthony Zerbe performance still entertained. I also realised for the first time just how good Chuck is in the film. As a kid I hadn’t seen it this way, but Heston’s Neville is a pretty fleshed-out character for this type of comic book sci-fi. He has his wisecracks and moments of fun, but he’s a tortured man, driven to the brink of insanity by Matthias’s gang; Neville hears dead payphones ringing in the street, sits through endless re-runs of Woodstock at a movie theater (never liked that bit myself. Why couldn’t he watch Dirty Harry or something?); back at his townhouse apartment, he dines and plays chess with his roommate, a bust of Caesar. When Neville finds other survivors, he doesn’t only help to save them from the plague, they save him from himself.
I still have a lot of affection for The Omega Man; I don’t find Neville’s world quite as appealing as I did at age ten, but the film still works for me, and reminds me why Heston is one of my favourite stars, the kind of leading man they don’t make nowadays.
“THERE IS NO PHONE RINGING, DAMMIT!”
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I keep meaning to get this on DVD, but never get round to it. Will seek it out.