n The Omega Man, Robert Neville (Heston) is the last man on Earth, surviving by scavenging the desiccated remains of a plague-wasted city. Before the Armageddon, which battered the biosphere with nuclear and biological weapons, Neville was a military research physician, a Renaissance man of the technological age. Now he is a post-holocaust hunter-gatherer, his lonely, three-year routine comprised of food-foraging over dusty shelves and shooting the Family. The last man on Earth, yes, but not alone.
The Family are virtually neo-humans: they are the blighted survivors of a global plague that mutated humans into extremely photophobic, generously psychotic albinos. Few in number, perhaps 300, they huddle their unbalanced minds 'round the debatable stability of their zealot-dictator, Matthias (Zerbe). With quasi-religious fervor and gestalt, the Family haunts the city's night, sweeping through hospitals, universities, libraries and museums, burning all of the legacies of technology and the old age. They also seek to purge themselves of Neville and hunt him regularly, for, unmarred by plague, he is a vessel for all the knowledge, science and civilization that the Family believes poisoned the old life.
Thus, the rhythm of Neville's world is inexorably ruled by light and dark. With the sun high, he hunts the Family and roots through the city for the dislocated acmes of science and art, hauling them back to his fortified brownstone haven. Every day is brutal, dull, identical--until the last man discovers he is not the only human left, and his blood may hold salvation for a doomed, diseased world.
An SF film for Easter
The Omega Man, based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, can legitimately be considered an SF Easter film. Its predominant themes of sin, deliverance, sacrifice and resurrection are high-minded and ambitious, as well as nicely balanced and executed. One of the film's neater ironies is Neville's twin aspects--destroyer and savior.
As part of the military-medical complex, he was a member of the brain-trust that created disease for martial purposes. Yet Neville is also salvation, for his blood contains plague antibodies derived from an experimental serum he developed and used on himself. He is too late to save the bulk of the people his previous work imperiled, but he has the potential to save the pitiful handfuls that are left. He is redeemer and redeemed.
This production is both evenly paced and plotted, and it manages a subtle emotional power. For example, the film devotes much time to illustrating Neville's post-apocalyptic lifestyle and last-man psyche. When he finally meets another soul, then is introduced to over a half-dozen more, the appearance of those new faces is overwhelming. The emotional onus of an omega man is further underscored by the band's speaking of their numbers as paltry, whereas Neville's rapturous countenance beams his newfound wealth.
The film definitely has a hokey aura, generated primarily by: a) the fact that this is an SF film starring Charlton Heston; b) the rather lackluster makeup job on the albinised Family; c) the twang and tang of an easy listening/Action Jackson hybrid 70s soundtrack; and d) the final vignette. Let potential audiences not be deterred. Parts of The Omega Man might taste a little gamey to the average consumer, but the gourmand will find it well-seasoned and rightly aged.
