Richard Matheson's I Am Legend has inspired three films, none of them a classic. Last Man on Earth (1964) has atmosphere and Vincent Price, but it's let down by low budget. I Am Legend (2007) is expensive yet alters the material to stroke Will Smith's ego. Neither's as chintzy as The Omega Man (1971), which reduces Matheson's story into Charlton Heston shooting zombies. Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) survives a nuclear war and plague as one of Los Angeles' few human inhabitants. He's a scientist immune to a disease which left other humans dead or turned into albino zombies. Neville falls in with a small group of other survivors, including Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and Dutch (Paul Koslo), trying to transfer his immunity into a cure. Unfortunately he's marked for death by The Family, a zombie horde commanded by ex-newscaster Matthias (Anthony Zerbe).
The Omega Man works best in its early scenes, where Neville cruises Los Angeles prowling for food, cars and occasionally murdering the Undead. Neville watching Woodstock in a theater, reciting dialog from memory, presages Edward G. Robinson's death in another Heston dystopia, Soylent Green. Yet the film grows sillier and sillier, boiling the story down to action, gross makeup and occasional ponderings about the world gone by. The inevitable '70s anachronisms, from Neville blasting eight tracks to a black albino calling his pad a "honky paradise," don't help.
Boris Sagal provides serviceable direction, with Russell Metty's photography making Los Angeles a spooky wasteland. But John William Corrington and Joyce H. Corrington's crude script evinces little feel for Matheson's story. Basically it's Neville, a badass scientist, fighting against albino luddite socialists, who reject the modern world, including a cure. But Matthias has a point noting that Neville's committing a one-man genocide against their kind. Omega eschews ambiguity by having them murder Neville's black friend and generally act like jerks, even though we can't blame them for hating the machine-gun toting interloper.
Charlton Heston cruises through the movie in smug beefcake mode, luxuriating in his masculine, shirtless superiority over the cloaked, scabby zombies. It's hard to buy his sensitive scientist side when he's sold purely as a man of action. Rosalind Cash's love interest gives the film occasional energy, and Anthony Zerbe makes a serviceable villain, but the other performers don't stand a chance against swaggering Chuck.
Maybe someday, someone will get I Am Legend right. At least Vincent Price and Will Smith get a few things right; combine their virtues, erase their flaws and you have a decent movie. As for The Omega Man, we can relegate it to the '70s bargain bin it deserves.
