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| "Eat lead, you undead commie bastards!" |
I really wanted to like this movie. I
know there are some high-profile fans of The Omega Man (Tim
Burton) and that it's often seen as a prime example of camp or satire
or some species of so-bad-it's-good. I love a rousing apocalyptic
romp. My family has owned a copy of Planet of the Apes since
1982, and I think Charlton Heston is awesome. But, brothers and
sisters, I can't say I liked much about The Omega Man.
The Omega Man
isn't good camp because it's not artificial or ostentatious enough,
nor does it put almost everything in quotation marks, as I remember
reading somewhere about camp. Good camp is the old Batman
television series, The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
Moulin Rouge, and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The
Omega Man can't be bad camp
because there is not bad camp – there's just bad.
The Omega Man has some satirical
elements, of course, poking fun at materialism, gun culture, the
media, revolution, and how all old animosities can fade away once the
world ends. But these objections are too easy, and pulled off in
such a graceless way that even the Heston's wry growliness amid the
rubble overreaches. And the film isn't in the so-bad-it's-good
neighborhood because there are too many glimpses of competence amid
the stupidity.
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| "We shall kill you with our flair for ferocious rhetorical nuance!" |
The plot is loosely based on Richard
Mathisen's novel I Am Legend, focuses
on an Army scientist (Heston) who, as the world is being destroyed
by biological warfare, desperately injects himself with an
experimental vaccine. It works, but Heston's character is the only
normal man left on Earth – or at least in the city of Los Angeles,
which will have to do. He spends his solo time driving fast through
the streets, armed to the teeth, killing off members of The Family
when he can find them. The Family are what's become of the bioweapon
survivors: light-fearing, sore-festering,
black-robe-and-mirrored-sunglasses-wearing creeps, led by the former
news anchor and current postapocalyptic windbag/madman Mathias (Anthony
Zerbe). The members of The Family are just plain goofy looking, and
I was awfully pleased when Heston got to kill a few here and there,
though it didn't seem a fair fight. In his spare time in the
evenings, Heston's character enjoys wiping sweat from his naked
man-torso and drinking scotch, maybe breaking up the monotony to eat
some beans and fire a few rounds at the Family from his fortified
fourth floor balcony. Wipe, glug, pow, pow.
In
Act Two, Heston meets a fine young woman, Lisa, played by Rosalind
Cash, who has not yet been infected, and he takes her back to his
place. Turns out, of course, there's a small group of survivors
living outside the city. Maybe Heston could come and visit? Maybe
he could help them find a cure? Maybe, baby, but how does that song
go? “If
you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy. . .”
It doesn't matter that Heston's a old white Army dude and Lisa's a
foxy girl with an Afro. It's the end of the world, people.
Bow-chicka-bow-bow.
Anyway,
the sex might be good, but the movie really goes downhill from there.
A cure is found, and the Family almost get Heston, but then they
don't, then all that good lovin' makes Heston vulnerable, and he gets
caught, wounded, and dies in a fountain, laid out dead in his best
Christ-pose. Jesus, it's bad. He died so that others may live,
see? Yawn. At no point are the baddies scary. At no point are you
disturbed or even grossed out. There's a couple of chuckles here and
there, but mostly the whole rigmarole is annoying. If you like
Heston, you'll enjoy bits here and there. If you like zombie movies,
you'll dislike The
Omega Man.
That's my final word.
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On Green Dolphin Street, Corea, Clarke & White, Forever