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The Omega Man

1971 ยท 98 min ยท movie
โญ 6.4 (36,229 votes)

In March 1975, a Sino-Soviet border conflict escalates into full-scale war in which biological warfare destroys most of the human race. U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D., is a scientist based in Los Angeles, California who tests the efficacy of various vaccines. As he begins to succumb to the plague, he desperately injects himself with an experimental vaccine, which renders him immune.

By August 1977, Neville believes he is the only immune survivor of the plague. Struggling to maintain his sanity, he spends his days patrolling the now-desolate Los Angeles, hunting and killing members of "the Family", a cult of plague victims who survive, but were rendered homicidal nocturnal albino mutants. Through flashbacks, Neville remembers how martial law was imposed, and the majority of people who succumbed to the plague were killed instantly. At night, living in a fortified apartment building equipped with an arsenal of weaponry, Neville is a prisoner in his own home. He is besieged by the Family, who seek to kill him. The Family's attempts to extract Neville from his residence have failed, due in part to their insistence on using archaic weaponry and siege warfare. When not hunting Neville, the Family destroys any remnant of science, blaming technology for the war, hence their reluctance to attempt more modern means to kill Neville.

One day, as Neville is in a department store helping himself to new clothing, he spots a healthy woman, who immediately flees. He pursues her outside, but later chalks it up to imagination, having earlier hallucinated about multiple telephones ringing. He finds the corpse of a Family member and remarks that the final stage of the disease will kill them all.

On another day, the Family finally captures Neville. After a summary trial, he is found guilty of heresy by the Family's leader, Jonathan Matthias, a former news anchorman. Neville is sentenced to death and nearly burned at the stake tied to a large wooden wheel representing modern technology in Dodger Stadium. He is rescued by Lisa, the woman he had earlier dismissed as a hallucination, and Dutch, a former medical student. Lisa and Dutch are part of a group of survivors holed-up at a former radio transmitter in the Hollywood Hills, none of whom exceeds the age of 30. Although their youth has given them some resistance to the disease, they are still vulnerable to it and will eventually succumb to it. Neville realizes that salvaging humanity would take years, as he will need a considerable amount of time to duplicate the original vaccine. He believes extending his immunity to others may be possible by creating a serum from his own blood.

Neville and Lisa return to Neville's apartment, where they begin treating Lisa's brother Richie, who is succumbing to the disease. Neville and Lisa are about to have a romantic evening together, just as the generator runs out of fuel and the lights go off. The Family then attacks, sending Matthias' second-in-command, Brother Zachary, to climb up the outside of Neville's building to the open balcony of his apartment. Neville leaves Lisa upstairs as he goes to the basement garage to restart the generator. Neville returns to the apartment to find Zachary right behind an unsuspecting Lisa. Neville shoots him, and he falls off the balcony to his death, dropping his spear on the balcony as he goes.

If the serum works, Neville and Lisa plan to leave the ravaged city with the rest of the survivors and start new lives in the Sierra Nevada wilderness several hundred miles north of Los Angeles, leaving the Family behind to die. Neville successfully creates the serum and administers it to Richie. Once cured, Richie reveals to Neville that the Family's headquarters are in the Los Angeles Civic Center, but insists that the Family is also human and that Neville's cure should be administered to them, as well. Consumed by his hate for the Family, Neville disagrees with him, so Richie goes to the Family by himself to try to convince them to take the serum. Matthias refuses to believe that Neville would try to help them, accuses Richie of being sent to spy on them, and has him tortured and executed. After finding a note that Richie left, Neville rushes to rescue him, but instead finds his brutalized dead body tied to a judge's chair in a courtroom.

Meanwhile, Lisa quickly and unexpectedly succumbs to the disease and becomes one of the Family. Returning home, Neville tells Lisa about Richie's death, but she already knows and has betrayed Neville by giving Matthias and his followers access to Neville's home. Matthias, who finally has the upper hand, forces Neville to watch as the Family sets his home and equipment on fire. Neville breaks free, and once outside with Lisa, he turns and raises his gun to shoot Matthias, who is looking down from the balcony. The gun jams, giving Matthias enough time to hurl Zachary's spear at Neville, mortally wounding him. The next morning, Dutch and the survivors discover Neville dying in a fountain. He hands Dutch a flask of the blood serum and then dies. Dutch takes Lisa away, weakened and compliant because of the sunlight, and the survivors leave the city forever.

Directed by

Boris Sagal

Starring

Charlton Heston
Lincoln Kilpatrick
Paul Koslo
Anthony Zerbe
Rosalind Cash
Eric Laneuville
Brian Tochi
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