THE OMEGA MAN (1971) ** The only film that I'm aware of in which Charlton Heston's love interest is a diseased albino black zombie-vampire member of a pseudo Charles Manson-family (or is that supposed to be The Process Church of the Final Judgment?). Apocalyptic melange of counterculture and evangelical eschatology and, to be fair, Mr. National Rifle Association doesn't appear all that partial to either. You think that great things could be in store when he opens with a machinegun in a red convertible and heads into the theater to watch Woodstock, but eventually the film bogs down beneath his big old jawbone. He's a good actor, but the more you're forced to focus exclusively on him the more fatiguing his acting becomes and more bizarre the mandible area of his skeletal alignment. Boris Sagal has put together a very exotic looking film, but it gets bogged down whenever Charlton has to speak (or worse, act like he's thinking) instead of shoot, and no one really makes a sufficient effort to turn the zombies good. Or is that the point? Open to nearly endless metaphorical interpretation, few of which could be worth anything in comparison of the effort required for such extrapolations. Instead, just sit back and hope that someone attacks something soon. Moving Ron Grainer score, more than echoes Ennio Morricone, and would have probably been of even more effect in a western, or at least set off against close-ups of Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson.
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