Review of The Omega Man (1971) by The N — 02 Jan 2017

I love this movie and felt vindicated about how much I like it when I read Tim Burton has mentioned "The Omega Man" in multiple interviews as one of his own favorites. Charlton Heston plays the last man on earth, a scientist looking for a cure to a disease that has turned the rest of the world's surviving inhabitants into white faced, milky-eyed, hood-wearing, anti-technology cultists/vampires called The Family.

Heston hunts down and kills Family members during the day and at night The Family attacks Heston's fortress/home. I think this film is probably the earliest post-apocalyptic movie that moved in the direction of "The Road Warrior" and "Escape from New York" with survivors living like savages off the ruins of the old world.

There have been plenty of end-of-the-world films and last-man-on-earth films before this, including a prior adaptation of this same story with Vincent Price, "The Last Man on Earth." That film was much closer to the original source material, Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend," but this version, which barely resembles the original story, presents a hollow, dusty, and generally ruined Los Angeles that looked significantly different from any other end-of-the-world film I can think of prior.

I'll admit that the black-hooded Family members look pretty silly and that the film is generally pretty campy, but I still love it. Overall, this isn't a film I'd recommend to most people, but if you're an old school post-apocalyptic movie fan, this is a pretty fun one to check out.