Film Review - The Omega Man (1971) - Spoilers

The Omega Man is the best adaptation of Richard Matheson's masterpiece, I Am Legend. It is not a great movie, but it is entertaining and Charlton Heston turns in a griping performance as Doctor Robert Neville, formerly a bio-war specialist and currently last remaining human. While the book has served as a source for two other adaptions - The Last Man on Earth (1964) and I Am Legend (2007) - neither is as good as The Omega Man.

Set in 1977, a couple years after a Sino-Soviet biological war kills off most of the population and mutates the few survivors, Robert Neville - the only uninfected human left - lives in an almost empty Los Angeles. By day, he roams the city, scavenging what he needs to survive and re-watching Woodstock in a movie theater. He also hunts down some the mutated plague victims. They are homicidal with dead white skin, grey eyes and extreme photosensitive. They are locked in a war with Neville, trying to kill - in the words of their leader Mathias (Anthony Zerbe) the last of "scientists, of bankers, of businessmen. The users of the wheel." Neville encounters another group of survivors who have a partial immunity and uses his blood as a serum to inoculate them against eh plague. In the end, Neville is killed by Mathias, but the survivors will be able to sue the serum he has created to save themsevles.

"Barbarians? You call us barbarians? Well... it is an honorable name. We mean to cancel the world you civilized people made. We will simply erase history from the time that machinery and weapons threaten more than they offered. And when you die, the last living reminder of hell will be gone." - Mathias

Charlton Heston's performance is the highlight of the film. His portrayal of Neville is believable and touching. Heston put some thought into how a man, living in a city of the dead, would actually behave. He conveys both the drive necessary to survive, while the despair at being the last man alive is lurking just below the surface. The first half of the film, showing Neville's daily routine and his struggle against the mutants, is the strongest part of the film. Anthony Zerbe also turns in a strong performance as Mathias, the charismatic leader of the neo-luddite mutants. His line delivery is chilling, a smooth, melodious cadence that strikes one as the kind of voice and diction a Charles Manson would have (like Manson, Mathias calls his group "The Family," an obvious reference to the infamous killer and his followers).

The set design is another strong point. The streets of Los Angeles have just enough clutter and corpses to create a strong visual sense of a dead and empty world. Neville's apartment is a fascinating mix of bachelor pad and survivalist bunker. And the soundtrack by Ron Grainer is unconventional for a sci-fi action film, but perfect thematically. Consisting of mostly smooth jazz and plaintive strings, horns and keyboards, it serves to reflect Neville's living in the past, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of better times, as well as the central theme of a world that is already dead with the few ragged survivors fighting a last, pointless war in the ruins. A more bombastic, typical action soundtrack would have been out-of-place in the world created by director Boris Segel and writers John and Joyce Corrington.

"Is there anything you can do, doctor, I mean, seeing as how you've lost over 200 million patients?" - Lisa (Rosalind Cash)

The film is not without flaws, some serious. While the change of the antagonists from vampire who want to use Neville for food to mutants who want to kill him isn't necessarily a bad thing (and fits with the germ warfare origin of the plague), the way it is handled detracts both from the horror of the book and leads to a logical problem. In the book, Neville isn't just threatened by the vampires, he is going to used by them as food. This is a fate worse than just death. The logical problem is obvious from almost the start. If the mutants just want to kill Neville and he lives in a place they can access (which, based on an ambush carried out at the beginning of the film, they can) why not just burn his building down? The vampires can't because they need him alive (at least, long enough to feed) and they don't seem very intelligent. The mutants are insane, but intelligent.

While Heston and Zerbe both turn in solid performances - as does Lincoln Kilpatrick as Zachary, Mathias' chief lieutenant - the rest of the cast is merely adequate. It is clear that the writers were interested in the clash of wills between Neville and Mathias and didn't care much about fleshing out the other characters, which is reflected in the lackluster performances.

While the cinematography by Russel Metty is fine, the direction is not very dynamic. Segel mostly worked in television. While there are no horribly blocked scenes, the film has a very flat "movie-of-the-week" feel to it. And William Zeigler's editing leaves much to be desired, with poor effects left in the final cut, Heston's stunt double in a motor cycle sequences painfully obvious and other flaws that should have been edited out, left in the film. It conveys the impression that elements of the creative team (including the director) didn't care enough about the film to deliver a professional end product.

"The bad dream is over, friend Neville. Now we can sleep in peace." - Mathias

While these are serious flaws, they do not detract from what the film gets right. It conveys the theme of isolation and psychological survival from the novel. Post-apocalypse Los Angeles is sufficiently chilling. The acting by the leads is engaging and those characters are interesting. The pace is good and the action sequences for the most part, well done (some poor editing aside). The Omega Man is good movie and worth seeing.

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