Omega Man

The Omega Man (in Spain, The Last Living Man; in Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico The Last Hope) is a 1971 American film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston in the lead role. It is the second adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic novel I Am Legend, published in 1954; the first was The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price as the lead actor.

Plot

During a terrible war between the USSR and China in March 1975, as part of the bacteriological attacks a virus has been released that ends up being deadly, and has exterminated the world population. Robert Neville, a military scientist from the city of Los Angeles, had prepared in time a vaccine that he injected himself with and that saved him from death.
It is August 1977 and it turns out that hundreds of individuals who were also managed to survive. They call themselves 'The Family', led by Jonathan Matthias, who have been hypersensitive to light by biological agents, so they hide during the day underground in the city, and They come to the surface at night. They feel the psychotic need to end everything that has to do with science and technology, which they consider to be the cause of war. For this reason, every night they try to enter the place where Neville lives to kill him, but he entrenches himself with all the means at his disposal.

One day Neville is captured in a wine cellar, and stands trial led by Jonathan Matthias, who sentences him to burn at the stake. Two survivors not yet infected by the virus, Lisa and Dutch manage to rescue him. She had seen him when she was touring the city, and he is a medical student, familiar with Neville's research. Both are part of a small group that has survived the virus and the "purifying" of the family, mostly young people and children who had not been affected by the virus either. Neville believes that it is possible to re-manufacture the vaccine that he had applied, to save the lives of the young people, but it is a plan that would take a long time, so he decides to transfuse his blood with the antibody against the virus. With this, a new hope is born for the survivors, who will leave the city to start a new life somewhere, but before they will face the family again, being attacked by surprise, which will trigger a fight that forces them to leave a mortally wounded Neville behind them.

Cast

• Charlton Heston - Robert Neville
• Anthony Zerbe - Matthias
• Rosalind Cash - Lisa
• Paul Koslo - Dutch
• Eric Laneuville - Richie
• Lincoln Kilpatrick - Zachary
• Jill Giraldi - Little girl
• Brian Tochi - Tommy.

Production

The film is a remake that this time takes as its premise the Cold War and the fear of nuclear attacks focused at that time on the now-defunct USSR, which reached its peak with the Cuban missile crisis, and that would dominate a large part of the two subsequent decades in all kinds of fields, so that not even cinema would be spared from this issue.

This version takes the previous film as its main source of adaptation, since compared to Richard Matheson's novel it loses too many elements that the novel addresses, and creates a seriously decontextualized version of the original story, omitting many aspects of the novel or reducing its expression, such as loneliness, the definition of being and the new society (the vampire concept of the "resurrected", the fear of the cross, garlic and its perspective from other cultures), as well as change and maladjustment to a world to which one is alien.

Charlton Heston found out about the plans to make the film by chance and ended up working to get it made into a big screen, playing Neville in it. Despite the controversies that still existed, the writers decided that Neville would have an African-American woman as a partner. Thus, in the end, Rosalind Cash was recruited to play Lisa.

The desolate city scenes were shot in downtown Los Angeles. The producers had planned to build large sets with deserted streets and shops, but these proved too expensive, so it was decided to shoot on weekends and first thing in the morning. Also, in the scene where Neville is in a movie theater, what is being projected is the documentary about the Woodstock Festival directed by the filmmaker Michael Wadleigh.

Reception

The film initially only grossed $29,999, but later ended up grossing $4 million in the United States and Canada. It also became the most popular adaptation of the novel and is today considered a cult film.