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.
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.
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