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Charlton Heston stars as the last uninfected man on Earth in the second of three adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Vincent Price previously starred in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, and Will Smith would later anchor the 2007 version, I Am Legend. The Heston version, directed by prolific TV director Boris Sagal (father of Married with Children star Katey Sagal) takes the most liberty with Matheson’s material, but it may still be the best of the three films.
Whereas the novel and other adaptations deal with vampires, The Omega Man replaces the supernatural element with a deadly plague brought about by germ warfare. Heston plays Neville, a scientist who was able to inoculate himself against the disease, which drains its victims of all hair and skin pigmentation before finally killing them. Neville spends his days hunting for the ‘nest’ of infected albinos in hopes of destroying them, and his nights barricaded in his home while they try to break inside. The albinos are characterized here as a religious cult who call themselves ‘The Family’. They shun technology or anything modern, since that’s what brought about the apocalypse. Instead, they mentally flagellate themselves for deserving their living punishment. They are sensitive to light, clad in dark sunglasses and black cloaks. Their pale skin is covered in boils and rashes.
On one of his daytime outings, Neville discovers a woman (Rosalind Cash) and learns she and another man (Paul Koslo) are holed up with several children. They are all seemingly healthy, but one of the children is beginning to succumb to the plague. The Omega Man then becomes a race for Neville to turn his blood into a cure for Cash, Koslo, and the children, before the albino death cult — led by actor Anthony Zerbe — wipes them all out.
The liberties taken with the source material — changing vampirism to a germ warfare plague, and turning the infected into a religious cult — distinguishes this film and makes it more interesting than it might have been otherwise. While a darker, more serious tone might have been more compelling, Boris Sagal still delivers a solid exploitation genre movie fit for a good Saturday matinee or midnight madness screening. The Omega Man also accomplishes an impressive atmosphere of desolation and solitude in its post-apocalyptic Los Angeles setting. Shots of wide, empty L.A. streets are haunting. (If you look closely, though, you’ll see an occasional car or bus moving in the distant background.) The action isn’t the biggest or most sophisticated — more on the scale of what a television budget is able to achieve than a feature film. But the film has a vibe that’s hard to shake and fun to revisit.
Like Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man almost benefits from Heston’s broad, hammy acting style. Cash and Koslo share his sensibility and leave memorable impressions as hippie/activist characters popular in movies at the time. The icing on the cake is Ron Grainer’s wonderful score. Grainer mixes classical instruments with 60s modernity and synthesizers to create a unique soundtrack very much of its time and wholly suitable to the film.
With Eric Laneuville and Lincoln Kilpatrick.