The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971) I am
& Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007) - Contextual Information
The word “comparative” is in the title – and although there may be an implication that the two UK films studied for FM1 Section B be compared and contrasted, here in Section C it is explicit.
*Tip Definition – Explicit :- not implicit or implied but obvious, not subtle, you must compare and contrast in order to reach the higher grades. More tips will be highlighted thus
*Tip
The Last Man on Earth (1964) Soy leyenda (1967) short film I Am Omega (19-?) (V) starring Vincent Price I am Omega 2007 The Omega Man (1971) I am Legend (2007) All based on the novel – 'I am Legend' – (Richard Matheson, 1954) Plot summaries for The Omega Man
(1971) More at IMDbPro
Robert Neville, a doctor, due to an experimental vaccine, is the only survivor of an apocalyptic war waged with biological weapons. The plague caused by the war has killed everyone else except for a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people calling themselves "The Family". The plague has caused them to become sensitive to light, as well as homicidally psychotic. They believe science and technology to be the cause of the war and their punishment, and Neville, as the last symbol of science, the old world, and a "user of the wheel", must die. Neville, using electricity, machinery, and science attempts to hold them at bay. Written by Roald E. Peterson III {slz13@cc.usu.edu} In the year 1977, two years after biological warfare between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union wiped out almost the entire human population, as revealed through flashback newsreel footage. Also in flashback, we learn that at the time Army Colonel Robert Neville-a military scientist-had injected himself with an experimental vaccine for the disease which rendered him immune. In Los Angeles, a group of several hundred resistant albinos calling themselves "The Family" have survived the plague. The plague has turned them into violent, nocturnal, light-sensitive albino mutants, and the disease has affected their minds with psychosis and "delusions of grandeur". Neville would like to destroy the
Family. As a former military officer, he is a hardened, realistic person who lives in a fortified apartment with an arsenal of weapons including a Smith & Wesson M76 submachine gun, an infrared-equipped Browning Automatic Rifle and satchel charges. But at night, Neville barricades himself in his apartment as The Family rages outside, taunting him by burning books and other objects of science and culture. The use of powerful searchlights and weapons deters The Family's raids on Neville's home. Written by Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com} In 1977, two years after Russia and China had engaged in germ warfare and destroying most of mankind, U. S. Army scientist Robert Neville, who had immunized himself, is practically alone in the city of Los Angeles, except for a group of albino-like survivors, led by a former newscaster, now calling himself Matthias, who had predicted the destruction, His group , sensitive to light and heat, are bent upon smashing all remnants of the prior civilization, especially Neville. Written by Les Adams {longhorn3708@windstream.net} A science fiction thriller based on the 1954 novel "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson. Set in 1977, two years after biological warfare wiped out the entire world population, except for Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) and a few that have been mutated into light-sensitive flesh-eating psychopathic zombies who are partially blind. Convinced by their fanatic leader, former news broadcaster Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), that Neville personifies the twin evils of science and militarism. Neville remains safely barricafed in his elegant, downtown penthouse apartment, where he has hoarded food, liquor and fuel normalcy in spite of the catastrophe around him, Neville patrols the city by day, carrying a machine gun and recording any sign of the mutants' activity in hopes of finding and destroying them. After another evening of fighting off attacks led by Matthias and his cohort Zachary, Neville searches downtown in hope of tracking them down. Attempting to suppress his constant anxiety, Neville "shops" in a clothing store and is startled when he sees a young black woman attempting to blend in with the store mannequins. Neville chases the woman, but she escapes by running into a park. Exhausted, Neville trudges into a bar and hearing a noise, descends into the darkened wine cellar where he is attacked by a group of murants who take him to Matthias. Matthias condemns Neville for not being one of his "family" because he is not infected and declares him "obsolete". Neville maintains that the mutants should organize and attempt to find a cure, but Matthias and the others declare Neville guilty and carry him outside to a cart where he is driven to an area just outside of the stadium. Lashing Neville to a tree, Matthias exhorts his followers to burn the scientist as the bodies of the the dead were burned after initial contamination. Suddenly the stadium lights come one, forcing the mutants to collapse in an effort to cover their sensitive eyes and skin. An uninafected young man appears and cuts Neville free, then guides him away to the tunnels under the stadium where they are joined by the young woman Neville saw in the store. The woman forces Neville at gunpoint to drive her on a motorbike through the stadium and away from the recovering mutants. At dawn, the couple arrives at a house at the base of the mountains where Neville is
stunned to meet a few healthy children. The young man joins the group and introduces himself as Dutch and the woman as Lisa. Dutch tells Neville that he is familiar with his work, as he was a graduate student in biochemistry before the disaster. Dutch explains that neither he nor Lisa and the children understand why they have not been afflicted with the plague, but admits that most of them have a mild sensitivity to light. Lisa and Dutch then tell Neville that they have brought him to examine one of the young people, Richie, who has shown signs of plague. After examining the boy, Neville shocks Lisa and Dutch when he reveals that he is immune to the plague due to a vaccination he developed and took just as the war reached its peak. Heartened when Neville suggests that his blood could be used to make a serum, Dutch and Lisa agrees to let Neville take Richie back to town where Neville has access to laboratories. At Neville's penthouse, he administers the last remaining vaccination to Richie. That evening, Neville treats Lisa to Dinner, but they interrupted by a power outage caused by the mutants. While Neville goes to the basement to restore power, Zachary scales the building to the penthouse balcony. Neville restores the lights and returns in time to kill Zachary just as he is about to attack Lisa. Neville and Lisa spend the night together and the next morning, Neville notes that Richie's condition is much improved. Taking Lisa to a laboratory, Neville draws his own blood and sets about making a serum he hopes will work. Pleased, Lisa offers to spend the afternoon gathering supplies for them and Neville returns to his penthouse to find a nearly recovered Richie. When Neville tells Richie about the serum, the boy expresses happiness that everyone will soon "return to normal". Neville explains that the mutants may be too far along in the illness to be saved and should be left dying. Dismayed, Richie criticizes the scientist for his hypocrisy and abruptly reveals that mutants hideout is the city civic center. Later, Neville goes to the mountains to report Richie's recovery and the serum development to Dutch, who agrees to join Neville and Lisa the following day. Upon returning to town, Neville finds a note from Richie declaring he has gone to confront the mutants to find out if they are as cynical as Neville. The scientist hurries to the civic center where he finds Richie brutally murdered. At dusk, as Lisa returns to the penthouse she runs into a torchlight parade by the mutants and, showing signs of the illness, joins them and let them in at Neville apartment. Back at the penthouse, Neville is confronted by Matthias, a dazed Lisa and several mutants who destroy his belongings. Neville succeeds in breaking free and, using a large kitchen knife, threatens Matthias. Grabbing Lisa, Neville flees outside, but when Matthias calls to Lisa from the balcony, she is confused and breaks away from Neville. As Neville's machine gun jams. Matthias takes a spear from one of the scientist's art displays and hurls it at Neville, impaling in him in the chest. The following morning, Dutch arrives with the children and is horrified to find Neville bleeding to death. Before dying, Neville gives Dutch the serum bottle and urges him to take the collapsed Lisa and the children away to start anew. Page last updated by cvagim, 4 months ago – as of site accessed on 18 Feb 2008
I The Omega Man 1971 China’s Cultural Revolution 1966-169
By mid-1965 Mao had gradually but systematically regained control of the party with the support of Lin Biao, Jiang Qing (Mao's fourth wife), and Chen Boda, a leading theoretician. In late 1965 a leading member of Mao's "Shanghai Mafia," Yao Wenyuan, wrote a thinly veiled attack on the deputy mayor of Beijing, Wu Han. In the next six months, under the guise of upholding ideological purity, Mao and his supporters purged or attacked a wide variety of public figures, including State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and other party and state leaders. By mid-1966 Mao's campaign had erupted into what came to be known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the first mass action to have emerged against the CCP apparatus itself. Considerable intraparty opposition to the Cultural Revolution was evident. On the one side was the Mao-Lin Biao group, supported by the PLA; on the other side was a faction led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, which had its strength in the regular party machine. Premier Zhou Enlai, while remaining personally loyal to Mao, tried to mediate or to reconcile the two factions. Mao felt that he could no longer depend on the formal party organization, convinced that it had been permeated with the "capitalist" and bourgeois obstructionists. He turned to Lin Biao and the PLA to counteract the influence of those who were allegedly "`left' in form but `right' in essence." The PLA was widely extolled as a "great school" for the training of a new generation of revolutionary fighters and leaders. Maoists also turned to middle-school students for political demonstrations on their behalf. These students, joined also by some university students, came to be known as the Red Guards. Millions of Red Guards were encouraged by the Cultural Revolution group to become a "shock force" and to "bombard" with criticism both the regular party headquarters in Beijing and those at the regional and provincial levels. Red Guard activities were promoted as a reflection of Mao's policy of rekindling revolutionary enthusiasm and destroying "outdated," "counterrevolutionary" symbols and values. Mao's ideas, popularized in the Quotations from Chairman Mao, became the standard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be judged. The "four big rights"--speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing bigcharacter posters --became an important factor in encouraging Mao's youthful followers to criticize his intraparty rivals. The "four big rights" became such a major feature during the period that they were later institutionalized in the state constitution of 1975. The result of the unfettered criticism of established organs of control by China's exuberant youth was massive civil disorder, punctuated also by clashes among rival Red Guard gangs and between the gangs and local security authorities. The party organization was shattered from top to bottom. (The Central Committee's Omega Man
I am Legend
Secretariat ceased functioning in late 1966.) The resources of the public security organs were severely strained. Faced with imminent anarchy, the PLA--the only organization whose ranks for the most part had not been radicalized by Red Guardstyle activities--emerged as the principal guarantor of law and order and the de facto political authority. And although the PLA was under Mao's rallying call to "support the left," PLA regional military commanders ordered their forces to restrain the leftist radicals, thus restoring order throughout much of China. The PLA also was responsible for the appearance in early 1967 of the revolutionary committees, a new form of local control that replaced local party committees and administrative bodies. The revolutionary committees were staffed with Cultural Revolution activists, trusted cadres, and military commanders, the latter frequently holding the greatest power. The radical tide receded somewhat beginning in late 1967, but it was not until after mid-1968 that Mao came to realize the uselessness of further revolutionary violence. Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and their fellow "revisionists" and "capitalist roaders" had been purged from public life by early 1967, and the Maoist group had since been in full command of the political scene. Viewed in larger perspective, the need for domestic calm and stability was occasioned perhaps even more by pressures emanating from outside China. The Chinese were alarmed in 1966-68 by steady Soviet military buildups along their common border. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 heightened Chinese apprehensions. In March 1969 Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao Island (known to the Soviets as Damanskiy Island) in the disputed Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River) border area. The tension on the border had a sobering effect on the fractious Chinese political scene and provided the regime with a new and unifying rallying call. The activist phase of the Cultural Revolution--considered to be the first in a series of cultural revolutions--was brought to an end in April 1969. This end was formally signaled at the CCP's Ninth National Party Congress, which convened under the dominance of the Maoist group. Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader. Lin Biao was promoted to the post of CCP vice chairman and was named as Mao's successor. Others who had risen to power by means of Cultural Revolution machinations were rewarded with positions on the Political Bureau; a significant number of military commanders were appointed to the Central Committee. The party congress also marked the rising influence of two opposing forces, Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai. The general emphasis after 1969 was on reconstruction through rebuilding of the party, economic stabilization, and greater sensitivity to foreign affairs. Pragmatism gained momentum as a central theme of the years following the Ninth National Party Congress, but this tendency was paralleled by efforts of the radical group to reassert itself. The radical group--Kang Sheng, Xie Fuzhi, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen--no longer had Mao's unqualified support. *****
Directed at young people...Mao, whose power base was in the Chinese army, wanted to reseize control from the bureaucracies that had grown up in education, industrial management and agricultural and economic development and to encourage the continuation of the revolution in Chinese cultural life. Free rail passes were issued and hundreds of thousands of militant young men and women flocked to Peking (Beijing), China's capital, to march in massive parades reviewed by Mao in Tiananmen Square. These communists or Red Guards vied with each other to express their patriotism and devotion ot Mao. They covered walls with posters denouncing Mao's enemies and traveled around China spreading the doctrines contained in Mao's "little red book". This endeavor to re-create and experience the fervor of the Red armies' LONG MARCH of 1934-35 soon got out of hand, however. Bands of Red Guards destroyed works of art and historical relics, denounced intellectuals, burned books, and attacked those they considered elitists or anti-Mao... Red Guards fought each other over ideological differences, and Chinese factions clashed with arms in most of the provinces, especially in the south... According to some accounts, the Cultural Revolution did succeed in eliminating many of the ageold differences between rich and poor and city and countyr, but it did so at enormous cost and loss. I am Omega 2007 - Produced by The Asylum - straight to video Whilst based on the novel I Am Legend by Robert Matheson, the film takes several liberties with the overall story: • •
• •
The character of Robert Neville is named simply as Renchard in the film. The disease that wipes out humanity is not a vampiric disease as the novel portrays, but is instead a genetic virus that mutates humans into a race of feral cannibals, not unlike the fictional "Rage" virus seen in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. The setting is moved from Los Angeles to New York City (as was also the case in the Will Smith adaptation, I Am Legend). In the novel, the infected humans attack only at night. In I Am Omega, however, they attack around the clock rather than at any set time.
Reviewed by
Christopher Armsted Erupting from the loins of the little film studio known as ‘The Asylum’ comes their latest little lower budget Hollywood parallel Direct-To-Video flick in ‘I am Omega’ which naturally coincides with the 200 billion dollar Will Smith vehicle ‘I am Legend’. More accurately though, ‘I am Omega’ seems a little closer tied to the 1971 Charlie Hess Sci-Fi thriller ‘Omega Man’ which I also saw for just the other day. As far as flicks from ‘The Asylum’ go, ‘I am Omega’ is there best one yet, at least of the ones I’ve seen. Admittedly this includes fare such as ‘Snakes on a Train’, ‘Tranmorphers’ and ‘Super Croc’ all surely among the worst films ever made, but for a little while at least ‘I am Omega’ was more than just a ‘good flick
for Asylum standards’ but a just a plain old decent flick. For a little while at least. Kung Fu kicking Marc Dacoscos is Renchard (not Neville as The Aslyum isn't trying to pay Richard Matheson one red cent) who is in a world where it seems that he is the last. Why the world has ended is never explained or even glossed over for that matter as far as I could tell, and we get a flashback of Renchard’s wife and child being attacked by some wild zombies. Now years later Renchard lives alone in his compound outside of Los Angeles, slaying wayward zombies with knives, guns, round house kicks and nun-chucks, all the while battling the dementia that comes from being all by yourself for years on end. Renchard also makes frequent trips out to various parts of the city planting explosives here and there in what is looks like his attempt to rid the world, which consists of only himself as far as he knows, of the zombie pestilence. One fateful day Renchard gets an incoming message on his computer from a video feed. I should note that Renchard has all kinds of password protections on his computer, which seems odd since the only person he needs to lock out of his computer would be himself and one also has to marvel that the whole internet, video chat thing has been made self sustaining in this near future which is awesome. Anyway, against
his better judgement Renchard allows the video feed in which reveals a woman on the other side of the transmission which freaks him out and makes act karazy. Again the video feed comes in, but now calmer he finds out that there is a woman alive in the world by the name of Brianna (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) and not only that, she tells him of a place called Antioch where there are thousands living with no infection. Girlfriend just needs a kind soul to come in and pick her ass up. Problem with that is she’s in the middle of the city where the main
zombie nest is and being as how Renchard has the city primed to explode in a few hours he tells her ‘my bad, so sad, can’t help you’. At least that was until a couple of good ol’ boys named Vincent (Geoff Mead – who also penned the screenplay) and Mike (Ryan Lloyd), obviously omega 2 and omega 3 come along and inform Renchard that Brianna has the key to curing the world in her blood and convince him of the error of his ways. Now the three of them go into the sewers to fight zombies and save the world, but there’s something fishy about these good ‘ol boy though, something fishy indeed. Though Dacoscos calim to fame is more for his speed, agility and martial arts skill than his acting ability, he’s not a bad actor at all, and ‘I am Omega’ in my opinion was at its best when it was just Dacoscos alone dealing with his myriad of issues and the zombies. There were a few scenes in this film that actually made me jump, which is quite a rare feat indeed. It was scary to point, while watching it alone in the dark, that I considered popping out the DVD and watching it the next day when there was some daylight out, but alas it was not necessary as the film got away from that promising beginning devolved into something else altogether. Just about the time our good ‘ol boys showed up on the scene, ‘I am Omega’ stopped being a psychological style thriller and turned into a run of the mill run and shoot save the damsel in distress gore fest, without the budget for gore which ultimately dooms the movie. Director Griff Furst seems to have a pretty good grip on the horror aspects of the movie but not the action implementation as the change in narrative became trite and quite honestly nonsensical. For the most part though all the performances were better than expected, the zombies looked halfway decent though there were a lack of things that I’m sure the filmmakers would have like to have put in but didn’t have the money for, like blood squibs and the like, and the stock looked like film, whether it was shot on video or not. ‘I am Omega’ is not a good movie, but it is a bit landmark in that we actually get discuss a movie from The Asylum and discuss it like it was normal film and not some junk shot by some guy with a handicam and his buddies. Let’s hope that this is the start of something of a new trend from this odd little studio.