Holed up in his fortress, Neville has – almost – everything he needs from fuel, guns and ammunition to a chess set and a bust to play it with. In a flashback we see that Matthias was once a broadcaster reporting on the breaking apocalypse, now he uses his communication skills to unite his group and to lead them against the last man. The cloaked figures gather outside – they are The Family, led by the charismatic figure of Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) who views the last vestige of humanity as a reminder of man’s folly, one that led to his groups mutation and doomed the world. This is a man at war with what remains of the world, holed up under the tightest of security with powerful spotlights trained down from a house locked down from cellar to chimney.
But, he’s a little late and his vehicle is set upon by cloaked figures… he shoots most of the attackers but a few make it through into his garage and are swiftly dispatched. He dives into his new car and drives as fast as he can to his home and sanctuary. Lost in the film he walks out to street in sudden panic as dusk approaches: it’s almost dark and “they” will soon be out. He goes to the movies and screens Woodstock for himself, reveling in the appearance of the multitudes and mouthing every line along with the new age optimists of the festival… how soon the people disappeared. His car journey is sound-tracked by 8 track modern jazz and, when one car breaks he simply goes and gets another… talking to himself and exchanging snappy chat with the long deceased used car dealer “How much? You cheating bastard!?” He catches sight of a girly calendar and pulls it quickly off the wall – a painful reminder of what has been lost.
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Robert Neville, M.D (Heston) seems to be the last man standing having injected himself with an experimental antidote in desperation after his helicopter crashed.īut the film starts many months after this as Neville roams free across a city devoid of almost all life.
It is of course 1975, the near future, and biological warfare between China and Russia has decimated mankind. Scenes were filmed on early Sunday mornings - trying to catch the city quietĭirected by Boris Sagal, The Omega Man was loosely based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (later filmed with Will Smith) and swapped vampires for plague-infected ghouls who cannot stand the light and live only in the shadows coming out only at night to scavenge and set fire to their old neighbourhood.
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In this film he caused a storm with one of the first inter-racial kisses in mainstream Hollywood between Heston and Rosalind Cash and I love the tale of when quizzed about by Whoopie Goldberg in her TV talk show about why such actions were still controversial even in the 1990s he leaned over and kissed her. But Heston was a complex man who supported the Democrats and civil rights in the sixties but later became a Republican claiming that he hadn’t changed the Democrats had… you can never say he wasn’t a man looking for principal.
In this way perhaps his famously total support for the right to bear arms connects to the essentially liberal concepts underlying these films: if we don’t clean up our act we’re all doomed and, if we are doomed only men like Charlton will make it through.
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