The Omega Man, In 1977, the American scientist and colonel Dr. Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is the last man on Earth. All the human race died or became mutants due to the use of biological weapons in a war. During the war, Dr. Neville was researching an experimental vaccine, and in a flight to a hospital to use his latest experiment, the pilot of his helicopter died and the helicopter crashed. Dr. Neville used the vaccine on himself and it worked, making him the last survivor of human race. The race of mutants self-calls ‘The Family’ and is leaded by the fanatic Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) in the middle-ages standards, without the use of any facility of the Twentieth Century. Dr. Neville finds some other survivors and intends to use the anti-corpus of his blood to prepare vaccines for them. The apocalyptic story has a tragic open end.
Yesterday I saw this movie maybe for the tenth time. In my opinion, it is one of the best Apocalyptic Sci-Fi movies of the 70’s (together with ‘Soylent Green’), when the world had the cold war to threaten and the population had a great fear of a biological weapons. In Brazil, ‘The Omega Man’ has not been released on VHS or DVD, and I have a VHS, recorded from the open Brazilian TV in the 80’s, dubbed in Portuguese, with a terrible image, but what else can I do to see this movie if the distributors and the cable TV do not show interest to release it in my country? For persons of other native languages like me, I would like to explain the original title of the movie. In accordance with ‘The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary’, omega is not only the 24th and final letter in the Greek alphabet, but also means the ending, the last of anything.
