THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical. sociological*



OMEGA has one immediate advantage over THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. Whereas Price was not at his best playing world-weary characters, OMEGA redesigned the Matheson storyline as a vehicle for Charlton Heston, a vehicle considerably indebted to Heston's classic performance in 1968's PLANET OF THE APES.  The similarity is pronounced: Heston's APES character Taylor was the only normal man on a planet dominated by intelligent apes, while his OMEGA character-- taking the name "Robert Neville" once more-- is the last true man in a world dominated by the victims of a bio-engineered plague.  Whereas I AM LEGEND simply referenced the artificial creation of the bacterial agent, OMEGA plays the "what fools these mortals be" card for all that it's worth.


Heston's Neville is a far more proactive character than the one seen in LEGEND or LAST MAN. Like them he's what I term a "demihero"-- a protagonist more concerned with survival than the defense of idealized justice-- but he's also much more kickass, which causes me to categorize OMEGA as a "combative drama." Ironically, at the time OMEGA was made, Charlton Heston had not yet become a public defender of "gun rights;" if anything he was known for campaigning for gun control. Today, the opening of OMEGA MAN-- in which the protagonist is first seen driving along the trash-strewn, deserted streets of Los Angeles, and shooting at a skulker in a window-- is almost comic as it captures the actor's latter-day persona.


Neville's foes are also skillfully re-imagined, for all that they may owe something to the bald mutants of BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES. The biological plague has devastated most of the populace of the United States, but in L.A. most of the survivors are albino mutants who are averse to light-- nearly the only trope they borrow from Matheson's novel.  Whereas the Cortman of novel and film is a nemesis who comes to nothing, "Matthias" (Anthony Zerbe) is a formidable religious fanatic who tells his fellow mutants to adjure the technology that infected them. Curiously, prior to the plague, Matthias was a television newscaster-- which would have made him a perfect foe for the  conservative icon Heston later became. Matthias and his fellows also wear monks' robes, giving them a medieval image, an image intensified in a scene where the robed men torment a captive Neville on a cart before threatening to burn him alive. Their name for themselves-- "the Family"-- invokes the Manson Family murders of 1969. However, where Manson predicted widespread war between blacks and whites, an early scene shows Matthias counseling his aide Zachary-- an albinized black man, complete with snow-white hair-- to "forget the old ways" of racial divisiveness, for "the Family is one."


That said, racial divisions are very much on the mind of scripters John and Joyce Corrington.  The 1954 Matheson novel has little to do with racial conflict, though once in a flashback does LEGEND's Neville mentions having spoken with a "Negro" mortician who gave him some insight on the functions of the living dead.  In the view of the Corringtons Neville's retreat to his fortified house, where he drowns out the rabble with classical music, is a species of "white flight," signified when Zachary calls Neville's digs a "honky paradise." Neville refers to the mutants as "vermin" and "barbarians," and it's clear that even though he is a military scientist who desires to cure the plague, he's defined himself in part in terms of hating "the other."


Yet, when he finally encounters Lisa-- the first normal-looking female he's seen in two years of mutant-fighting-- she's played by a black actress, Rosalind Cash. Lisa, unlike the comparable characters from the earlier versions of the story, is a resourceful, kickass female of the type that would be popularized two years later in films like COFFY and CLEOPATRA JONES. Lisa turns out to be a member of a group of survivors hidden in the hills, who have developed some resistance to the plague. But they still need Neville's help to fight off the encroaching disease. I suspect the Corringtons were aware of some of Heston's "great white father" roles in films like 1963's DIAMOND HEAD; when he gives blood to cure one of the survivors, he asserts jokingly that his blood is "160 proof Anglo-Saxon." Heston's TEN COMMANDMENTS reputation is probably also referenced when a little survivor-girl asks Neville, "Are you God?"


On the other hand, not all religious metaphors are jokes. When one of the hippie-like survivors finds out that Neville's blood can be used for a cure, he cries out to Neville, "Christ, you could save the world." His use of "Christ" is primarily meant as an epithet. But amusingly, it could also be read as imputing Christ-characteristics to Neville.  And in the end, Neville does sacrifice his blood for the redemption of mankind. When Neville makes his final war of revenge on the mutants, his persistent enemy Matthias gets in the final blow.  Whereas Robert Morgan's death is given only a vague religious context, OMEGA MAN goes the whole nine yards: Lisa plays Judas, betraying Neville to Matthias, who in turn plays Longinus as he spears Christ-Neville to death in a fountain. Neville dies in an attitude of crucifixion-- oddly, Lisa references crucifixion in her first meeting with Neville-- but the great white father lasts long enough to give his redemptive blood to Lisa's hippie-friends, who will implicitly inherit the Earth. 


I suppose from one point of view, THE OMEGA MAN might be criticized for displaying its theme a little too broadly.  But as I prefer "too much" to "too little," the Corringtons' take on the earlier narratives strikes me as the best of the three.