Omega Man (1971)

Starring Charlton Heston

Plot Summary: Charlton Heston may be the last man on earth, but at least he still has a lot of mutants around to kill.

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Omega Man features Charlton Heston in the midst of his "post apocalyptic nightmare world" period, bookended by Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green. This time the apocalypse is brought about by biological warfare. Chuck Heston plays an army officer. Okay. More specifically, he was an experimental doctor researching vaccines against the man made plague unleashed upon the earth by full scale biological Armageddon. That's a bit of a stretch, although in the flashback scenes he makes one of the most intense medical researchers since Christopher Walken's stunning role as Louis Pasteur.

So let's look at the first plot point, told in flashback about three years prior, when the world is destroyed and Chuck is spared. The plague is winning, and people standing outside die about ten seconds after first contact. Chuck is researching intensely, and decides to personally escort the delivery of an experimental vaccine by helicopter. The pilot once airborne breathes, chokes for ten seconds, and promptly dies. The helicopter, sans pilot, crashes in a ball of flame. Chuck intensely crawls away, suffering minor cuts and bruises but otherwise unharmed by the fiery helicopter crash. Perhaps he was thrown clear, but mainly he survives by virtue of being Charlton Heston. He jabs the vaccine in his thigh and lo! is rendered immune to the plague.

A film, however, starring Charlton Heston as the only man on earth would be kinda boring, so the plot twist is that the plague doesn't necessarily kill after ten seconds. For a few select individuals, the plague turns them into psychotic albino creatures of the night. They band together to form The Family, led by Matthias (Anthony Zerbe). Their purpose is to cleanse the earth of science and technology by killing all who oppose them and burning everything ever written, much like the Christian Coalition.

But back to Chuck. In response to claims that he can only play biblical figures and assholes, he displays the third role he is well suited for: 100% Pure Lunatic. In the opening scenes as he scavenges through the empty city, he passes the time carrying on witty and urbane conversations with corpses, statues, and a host of inanimate objects. In time we learn that most of the daylight hours are spent hunting down The Family's daytime home so he can slaughter them all in their sleep. He does this in part to try and salvage some meaning to his life in a meaningless world, part to defend humanity or at least the memory of humanity, and part because he is completely insane. This leads to conflict between Chuck and the unholy army of the night. All hours after sunset are spent defending his Victorian apartment building home from their relentless attacks. You may start to wonder what damage is done when a man doesn't sleep for two years. The answer to that is the same reason that the biggest TV screen on his panel of security cameras is focused on… himself: He is completely insane.

So Chuck, always armed with a really big semiautomatic pistol or IR-scoped snipers rifle, spends his days hunting mutants and his nights being attacked by them. This film has actually been re-released by the NRA under a new title: "Guns: Our Only Defense Against Mutants in a Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare World." More proof that Chuck Heston may have played Moses, but is clearly God, or at least a god: The mutants have known for years exactly where he lives, and yet Chuck holds off their nightly attacks with a gun in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. Why the mutants can't successfully destroy a 4-story Victorian apartment building is unclear. Although they are opposed to technology as symbolized by the wheel, they seem perfectly okay with using a catapult to hurl flaming stones at the wooden apartment building. Chuck again holds them off with a fire extinguisher. Sadly, eventually the generator that powers the floodlights that keep the photophobic mutants at bay fails, and when Chuck goes to the basement to investigate, a mutant pushes a bookshelf down onto him, knocking the poor guy unconscious. He awakens, shirtless, tied to a stone slab in the middle of his trial. The courtroom drama is pretty short...

Okay, I need to deal with this one. Charlton Heston is damn near 50 in this film, but as you can sort of see in this scene - and much more clearly later during the shirtless running scenes - he clearly has a six pack. This in the pre-computer generated graphics era.

So back to the trial. Matthias finishes his speech by saying, "Take him to the little room." The little room is never good. It's never, "Take him to the little room, give him some cookies and punch, and then set him free." I mean, you know they're going to do evil mutant-ass things to Chuck. So eventually he finds himself tied to a stake. Being very pro-fire, the mutants decide to go the Joan of Arc route. At the very last moment, Chuck is freed by the Deus Ex Machina gang of normal humans. So apparently there are a few more normals in the world, and thus it is revealed that the plague actually can have a long dormant stage before leading to the psychotic albino stage. Genetic engineering at its best. Now this band trying to fight off the plague's tendency to turn people evil rescues/kidnaps Chuck. They consist of irrelevant characters and Lisa. Lisa (Rosalind Cash) is a young woman whose beauty is only surpassed by the size of her afro. I mean, this is one fine lookin woman, who has even graduated from the Pam Grier School of Blaxploitation with a major in ass-kicking and a minor in booty. While hopping on a motorcycle behind the equally sexy Charlton Heston, she puts a gun to his back and warns him, "If you just have to play James Bond, I'll bust your ass." Thus begins a love story that would eventually be retold by Spike Lee in Jungle Fever.

So if you want to see Charlton Heston hauling around more guns in an even crazier manner than he does now with his NRA buddies, if you think that "honky" should return as the epithet of choice for white people, if you want to see the eternal struggle of normals versus albinos, Omega Man is the film for you. I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964)

Starring:
Frank Sinatra
Dean Martin
Sammy Davis Jr.
Bing Crosby

Plot Summary: The Rat Pack screws around for 123 minutes.

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The Rat Pack. Gangland Chicago, circa 1920s. All this means one thing to me: Great hats. I mean, these guys have fedoras coming out the freakin yin yang.

In this musical gangster comedy adapting the Robin Hood legend to Prohibition-era Chicago, the Rat Pack appears in slightly slimmed down form. Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford are dropped from the bill as punishment for stepping out of line, baby. The Chairman of the Board did not tolerate disloyalty in his kingdom of hip. So to replace these fellows we have Bing Crosby and Peter Falk. Now Falk I can deal with, but Bing Crosby? White Christmas Bing? The guy is like the anti-hipster, as close as I figure he is in the cast to make Frankie and the boys look even cooler. His character is the uptight secretary Allen A. Dale, because the director probably objected to the original name Super Weenie Boy.

Edward G. Robinson also has a cameo in the opening as the mob boss of Chicago, until he is knocked off by Peter Falk and the combined casts of all three Godfather movies. It is the best thirty seconds an actor has ever had. He looks a little not well, actually he looks like he's been dead a few months, which he may have been in retrospect. If you don't believe me, take a look at the man in Soylent Green. The animatronics were incredible in any case.

Peter Falk is perfect in the role of villain Guy Gisborne. Colombo never fails to delight in all his menacing cross-eyed magnificence. You may ask, "Why have I never seen Peter Falk sing in any of his numerous film and television appearances?" Well, watch Robin and the Seven Hoods and you will finally find out.

But the movie is really not about them, or even about us. It's about Frankie, Dino and Sammy. In this film they play Frankie, Dino and Sammy. Technically, Sinatra plays Robbo, the mob crime boss with a heart of gold. This illustrates once again the secret to being hip is often just adding an -o to words. Frank takes on the role to prove he is the only man who can make Robbo sound like a cool name. Dean Martin staggers in as Little John, a hard drinking, womanizing pool shark from Indiana. This has always been cited as a major stretch for the actor since the guy was actually from Ohio. Sammy Davis Jr. plays the role of Will, a gun toting, tap dancing psychopath. His big scene is when he shoots up a casino all the while tapping an outrageous rhythm on the bar and singing "Bang-Bang." He is the NRA. You may notice that this makes a grand total of three hoods. For all intents and purposes, this may be true, but "Three Hoods" didn't have a good ring and "The Rat Pack Screws Around in Prohibition-Era Chicago" was struck down by the studio. So, in order to round out the cast, Frankie, Sammy and Dino are joined by Non-Descript Mob Guys 1 through 4. Some of the names of the Miscellaneous Thugs in either Frank or Colombo's mobs include Twitch, Soupmeat, Hatrack and Charlie Bananas, going to show that Frank just didn't care. And why should he? The Chairman of the Board does not tolerate sub-plots, baby. Sub-plots defined as scenes in which the Rat Pack is not prominently featured.

And does it get any better than Frank walking out of the courthouse singing "My Kind of Town"? I have to agree with Frank. He captures the very essence of what is great about Chicago. I have never seen Chicago. The man is good.

Let's move on to some of the more subtle themes in the film. For instance, women are evil. There really is only one woman in the film that's not a flapper showgirl getting hit on by Dino. That would be Barbara Rush as Marian Stevens, daughter of Big Jim and a no-good scheming broad. The shocking conclusion to the film, which as always I will now reveal, is that she teams up with Bing and takes all of Robbo's money. As far as I can tell, this is a commentary that even the un-hip can triumph over the hip when they combine forces with the no good scheming broad. It is truly a sobering moral that rivals that of Dr. Strangelove or Billy Madison. But don't cry for the Rat Pack, friends, Frankie and the boys still have their style, and their close harmony singing. I would have to say this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

Starring Chuck Norris

Plot summary: Chuck Norris is a Zen trucker who must save his brother from a speed trap.

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Breaker! Breaker! comes right out of the 1970s, embracing the era in all its decadent glory. And the glory of the 1970s was, of course, CB radio. Yes, cross country truckers were all the rage, their language capturing the American imagination even though it was clear from the start that they were making up every word of it as they went along. This movie brought that particular piece of Americana and mixed it in with the Zen martial arts of the great Chuck Norris in a rare beardless appearance. His first solo work after many years of being Bruce Lee's little cabana boy, this East meets West jewel starts out perfectly and never ceases to satisfy.

Chuck Norris, Zen trucker John Dawes, sends his little brother Billy (played by a delightfully scampish Michael Augenstein) out on a short dry run. Billy is by the way a dirt bike enthusiast to make the period piece complete. Sadly, though, the youth falls into a speed trap, or a 10-73 if you speak trucker. This appears to be the main plot point, which is an odd status to award a speeding ticket. I'm pretty sure it symbolizes something.

The little podunk town of twenty called Texas City, California, is actually a vast corrupt crime syndicate run by the mayor, Judge Trimmings. George Murdock plays this character with the subtle mixture of one part Enrst Blofeld from James Bond villain fame and one part Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard series. After arguing with the judge, assaulting several police officers and jumping through a plate glass window to escape the trial, Billy is captured by the evil townies. He gets locked away somewhere, or so you have to assume since you don't actually get to see him until the last few minutes of the film, but don't think that this will get on your nerves or anything. Chuck Norris rolls into town in search of his brother, driving a big ass van with a golden eagle painted on the side of it. I mean, a giant golden eagle! Nothing screams don't fuck with me like a giant golden eagle. Incidentally, the van looks remarkably similar to the Mystery Machine of Scooby Doo fame. Chuck proceeds to investigate, and by investigating I mean kicking the crap out of everyone in the town consecutively and concurrently. Somehow interspersed in all of the asswhooping, the director finds time to add about twenty or so subplots to the film. This is possibly to distract from the fact that he all but ignores the little brother that Chuck is whooping all the ass over in the first place.

These subplots include the single mom waitress with a heart of gold that is wooed (nudge nudge) by Chuck and won over to his cause, her son who runs off into the Central Valley wilderness to escape the evil police force, a mildly retarded hick that is discernible from the merely brutally stupid hicks by virtue of a stutter, his caring brother who is the ruffian with a heart of gold, and a guy who randomly flies around in a helicopter a la Mad Max whose sole purpose in life is to justify a bunch of aerial shots of Chuck running around beating ass. You may want to take notes.

After Chuck works his way through beating down everyone a couple times, one of the resident hicks realizes that repeatedly rushing a master of the deadly arts is not quite as effective as pointing a rifle at him. Outsmarted at last, Chuck Norris winds up in jail. Now with the hero immobilized, you'd think the plot would slow down. Actually it kinda disappears for about fifteen minutes - don't worry. The subplots more than take up for the slack, and soon you've forgotten all about poor Chuck and his brother, and for that matter, why you're watching the flick in the first place. Then when you finally give up all hope of understanding what the hell is going on, the cavalry is called in. Yes, the CB lingo talking cross country truckers themselves. Their plan to save Chuck from jail is apparently a scorched earth policy consisting of driving their big rigs through every building in town, eventually freeing or flattening him, either way really. As the cross country trucker cavalry is ripping shit up, all of the subplots converge. Not only that, but Chuck's kid brother Billy (Remember him? That's why Chuck is kicking the crap out of the town in the first place!) is found concealed in a barn and is reunited with his golden-haired ass-beating brother. Granted all of these subplots converge in the same minute and a half, so you may need to refer back to the copious notes you have taken throughout the film to have the slightest clue who the hell anyone is. The primary theme you will want to explore is economic freedom for the common man from corrupt government intervention, as symbolized by Chuck Norris delivering countless roundhouse kicks to the face of the local cops. I would have to say that Breaker! Breaker! is the greatest movie I have ever seen.