Saturday night I sat down with two physicists from Union University and watched Charlton Heston in The Omega Man. The film is part of an unofficial apocalyptic trilogy which includes Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green.
First thought: Heston was still rocking his own hair in this film. I like that. One of the great improvements in today's Hollywood is that a guy like Bruce Willis is allowed to run around without a hairpiece. Heston didn't need one with that great face of his.
Second thought: I have apparently never seen this film outside of running into it on cable. Seeing it uncut on DVD is a whole new experience. There are several scenes I don't recognize from previous viewings.
Third thought: Though it obviously can't compete with the Will Smith remake (the third version of Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend) in terms of effects or heart-racing action, The Omega Man is a much more substantial film in terms of ideas. Heston is holed up in his residence surrounded by artifacts of western civilization. He is a scientist and a renaissance man. Thanks to a last minute success, he is immune to the plague that has decimated the human population and left the overwhelming majority psychologically unstable, murderous, and mutated. They live their waking hours at night under a cultic leader who rails against technology and progress. Instead, he emphasizes a tribal sort of brotherhood in thrall to his own charismatic leadership. The imagery is hard to miss. Heston is the older, white man holding on at the apex of social achievement and trying not to fall off the mountain like the rest of the world has. His antagonists, the Family, are a proxy for sixties radicals who want to chuck the entire civilizational project and embrace primitivism. NEXT PARAGRAPH SPOILER . . .
The writers of The Omega Man do something interesting with the end of the movie. Heston's character has been working successfully on a serum made from his own blood. Thanks to a reversal of the plague in one victim, it is clear that it works. Heston is killed with a spear through the chest as he tries to save a young woman who is succumbing to the disease and to the siren call of the leader of the Family. He slowly expires hanging cruciform on a fountain that turns red with his blood. Daybreak comes and the last surviving humans come to him hoping to all leave together for the wilderness where they can start anew. Heston's last act is to give them the serum. They drive off, apparently saved by Heston's sacrifice. So, Heston's character is clearly a Christ figure. What is so intriguing is that his Christ figure is a man of science. Faith and knowledge merge in the film's climax.
You don't get any of that in the Will Smith version which basically treats the mutated human beings as equivalent to zombies. Again, Smith's performance is terrific, as is the entertainment and excitement value of the film, but the big ideas aren't there.
Also interesting is the fact that neither of the two big versions have run with the actual premise of Richard Matheson's book. In Matheson's story, there is a last man remaining from civilization as we know it who spends all day every day locating the mutated humans and killing them. He is grim in his determination to kill these creatures who now lurk in the night. The great twist in that story . . .
SPOILER ALERT
. . . is that the man we have identified with as a hero throughout the book is finally captured. He listens to how they talk about him and suddenly realizes that, in their view, HE is the monster. His death will be like a kind of deliverance for them. Quite a nice twist. I wonder why Hollywood hasn't gone that way with the story?
The Will Smith version can be redeemed if you watch the alternate ending available on the DVD's. SPOILERS!!
What has been hinted at throughout the movie (that the creatures have a culture and a community and intelligence) is proven when the attack on Smith's house/lab culminates in the leader doing what he came to do: rescue his mate, whom Smith has captured and experimented on. The leader leaves Smith alive and unharmed but with a final roar which, to my ears, dripped with contempt for what Smith had done. The leader at least showed . . . humanity.
This ending reflected the original story in that the creatures were the inheritors of Smith's world and he, as in the story, was a monster: experimenting, vivisecting and killing their fathers, mothers and children.
Obviously too subtle and original a point. So they went with the theatrical ending: they're monsters, Smith is a hero.
Posted by: William | January 31, 2011 at 08:27 PM
Ah, William. Thanks for that. Yes, that would have been extremely interesting and certainly more true to Matheson's vision.
Posted by: Hunter Baker | February 01, 2011 at 08:25 AM
I'm not particularly interested in the Will Smith version, but I do want to watch the old Vincent Price one, "Last Man on Earth." I keep meaning to do so but then I forget to follow up.
Posted by: Rob G | February 01, 2011 at 09:55 AM
I'm glad Rob G brought up THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, the first and by far the most faithful version of the novel. Matheson wrote the script, but then put his Logan Swanson pseudonym on the screenwriting credit after another scenarist revised his work. Although the finished film alters the details somewhat, it retains his basic ending of the "new society" regarding Morgan (aka Neville) as the monster and doing away with him. The film, and especially Matheson's novel, was also a major influence on the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. For further information, see my book RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4216-4).
Posted by: Matthew Bradley | February 02, 2011 at 10:42 AM
The Last Man on Earth ends in a Catholic Church. Does Morgan die on the altar? I think so, but I can't remember.
AMDG,
Janet
Posted by: Janet | February 03, 2011 at 10:07 AM
Yes. Impaled with a spear on the altar.
AMDG,
Janet
Posted by: Janet | February 03, 2011 at 10:26 AM
I think you can watch Last Man on Earth here: http://www.archive.org/details/the-last-man-on-earth
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | February 03, 2011 at 01:32 PM
Boy, that takes me back - right to high school in the early '70s, when it played on television. My English teacher discussed it shortly afterward, but only two students in the class were metaphor-minded enough to recognize the imagery, even though most were likely familiar with the Bible, this being rural North Carolina. (Yes, I was one of the two and probably quite smug about it.) I can't help but wonder if a teacher now would even be allowed to point out the Christian echoes.
Posted by: CS Baillie | February 03, 2011 at 04:25 PM
Like most I'd seen The Omega Man, and both versions of The Last Man on Earth before I read Matheson's book. The book's ending was quite a surprise, and sat with me far longer than any of the movies (though this post gives me new eyes with which to view Heston's version). It is an interesting question to ponder, why Hollywood has not cleaved closer to the book's ending. I think the answer lies in Hollywood's lack of respect for it's customers, thinking that people would not understand Matheson's ending.
Posted by: Daniel Crandall | February 06, 2011 at 04:48 PM
Lack of respect is exactly it. Which is why movie writing has continued to get worse and worse: unoriginal, dumbed-down and boring. The suits that make these decisions think most folks will settle for advanced special effects and not care what the plot or dialogue are. Sigh. For most of the movie going public, maybe they're right.
Posted by: William | February 07, 2011 at 08:07 AM