The Omega Man

Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend is a book that is nearly ready made for film adaptation. One that has been adapted three times, this is probably the most famous, and each somehow swinging and missing. The Omega Man makes the fatal mistake of requesting that the audience invest in Charlton Heston as a world weary, introspective leading man. He is not that guy.

Heston is gritted teeth machismo. He is an actor that requires an epic scope to anchor is limited abilities as an actor. When taken in context of something like Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments, he excels as the role requires not a depth of feeling but a force of personality to power through and hold the material together. If the material zeros in on quiet moments and exact character work, then he’s not your man.

The Omega Man tries to make someone who is a “type” into a subtle actor. The material distorts around him along with a general silliness that the novel avoided. The presence of the vampires was a reframing of the creatures as something else entirely. Long gone were the aristocratic “others” with their refined manners and eccentric habits instead they are the results of a pandemic that creates a new strain of humanity. Matheson’s prose reflects a growing sense of isolation, dread, and eventual acceptance of the narrator’s status as transitioning from standard to superstition. This is outside of Heston’s abilities as an actor.

A similar thing occurs in how ghouls are represented here. There’s no sense of fear or dread in them. They look silly in their medieval monk robes and cheap aging makeup. The twin poles of I Am Legend’s prose are warped and unsatisfactory here. Yet The Omega Man overpowers these limitations through sheer force of will. It swaps out emotional investment with thrilling chases, PG-rated sex and romance, and a healthy dose of 1970s jaundice. A classic? Eh, hardly, but a good enough clock eater.