Heston is immune to the plague, thanks to a vaccine he was working on just before things broke loose. He barricades himself in a Los Angeles penthouse with floodlights outside to scare away the ghouls and puts in a 20-year supply of the best imported Scotch. Prudent of him. Even if biological warfare doesn't break out and leave him marooned with a city full of ghouls, at least he can have a drink while thinking about his close call.
The ghouls, alas, are a little too ridiculous to quite fulfill their function in the movie. They make all the wrong decisions, are incompetent and ill-coordinated, and speak in an elevated "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" sort of English. Wouldn't you like to hear a little slang from a ghoul for a change?
The others in the movie are more interesting, however. Heston is the only truly immune man, but he stumbles across a band of survivors who haven't yet fallen to the plague, and provides them with a serum that will save the human race. This band includes Rosalind Cash, who is engagingly brash and rescues Heston from cremation. Then there's an obligatory motorcycle chase (well done) and a creepy interlude in a ghoul-infested wine cellar before the movie sort of bogs down. Not even a shot of Heston in the obligatory crucifixion pose can quite mend things.
"The Omega Man" is based on an uncredited novel by Richard Matheson. I wonder if it was I Am Legend, a very good work about the last normal man left in a world of vampires. He held them off with mirrors, crosses, and garlic--the usual mixture -- and did very nearly as well as Heston with his spotlights.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46tn55ln6KyqK2MppinZWFuhHI%3D