Omega Man, Oh God

Can you believe I’ve never seen The Omega Man (1971)? Ms. Spenser had, and we’d seen the Vincent Price Last Man. But we can’t see the Will Smith version until I’ve seen this.

To give you an idea of what this is like: It starts with Charlton Heston riding around a deserted Los Angeles in an convertible, shooting up zombies, then going to the movies. Woodstock, “Held over for three years.” He’s seen it so many times he can recite it from memory. But he knows something those crazy hippies don’t: The world is on the brink of a disastrous war, a war fought with biological plague weapons. These weapons spread a disease that turned everyone into crazed, pale, light-hating “zombies”.

Note: these zombies aren’t really zombies. We meet two of their political leaders, Anthony Zerbe and Lincoln Kilpatrick. They are anti-technology mystics with a medieval feel, but after that war thing, that might be rational. So other than the aversion to light, they are really pretty normal. They don’t seem to re-animate corpses or eat brains or anything.

Anyway, Heston was a biologist working on an vaccine for the weapon, and managed to get himself inoculated. So he’s safe as long as he can avoid getting killed one night. Then he spots another survivor, and she pretty, black Rosalind Carter. She puts him in contact with a group of naturally immune street kids and hippies, but they are slowly succumbing too.

As I understand it, it is traditional for last man on Earth stories to develop into interracial romances (see The World, Flesh and the Devil, The Quiet Earth). But when it’s Charlton Heston, it resonates. The racial and social politics of this movie seem overwhelming now. Not sure how they played in 1971 - all my friends thought this was a kickass horror film (which is partly why I didn’t see it). Now it seems like a twisted social parable, about the reckless establishment and the feckless youth, with only scientist/scholar/adventurer/soldiers like Heston to save us all, even if they wind up crucified. Heavy, man.