Tag Archives: Anthony Zerbe

“There is no phone ringing, dammit!” Projection Booth episode 422 : The Omega Man

I’m thrilled to tell you all that episode 422 of The Projection Booth podcast is live and features yours truly, joining co-hosts Mike White and Maurice Bursztynski, to talk about Boris Sagal’s 1971 dystopian science fiction film, The Omega Man.

The Omega Man stars Charlton Heston as Richard Neville, the last human survivor of a devastating biological plague – so he thinks. Neville spends his days hunting down the only other remnants of the human race, a group of anti-technology, homicidal mutants, known as the Family, and headed by an ex-TV news reader, Matthias (Anthony Zerbe). At night, the only time that the sun sensitive mutants can come out, Neville holes up in his swanky Los Angeles apartment, trying to avoid being killed and living a weird pantomime of his pre-apocalypse linking, drinking too much and playing chess with a statue of Julius Caesar.

That is until he discovers another human survivor.

There are several reasons why I am so enamoured by The Omega Man. As I discuss in my monograph on another masterpiece of 1970s dystopian SF cinema, Rollerball, SF was a relatively marginal genre of cinema until 1968. That year saw two films released that changed the perception of the genre: Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.… Read more

On the Beach and other cinematic dystopias

the_omega_man_large_04A few weeks ago I watched Stanley Kramer’s 1959 film On the Beach for the first time. It’s been on my mind constantly since.

I read the book by Nevil Shute, on which the film is based, soon after leaving school. At the time I was deeply involved in the anti-uranium and peace movements and, not surprisingly, its message about the danger of nuclear conflict resonated strongly.

For those who have not seen Kramer’s film (or read Shute’s book), it is set in the aftermath of an accidental nuclear war triggered by unnamed rogue state with access to atomic bombs. All life on the planet has been extinguished except for Australia and we are on borrowed time, waiting as a huge radioactive cloud slowly makes its way towards us. The cast, which includes Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, in a rare dramatic role, and Anthony Perkins pre his performance in the blockbuster, Psycho, is terrific.

There are so many things about the film that make it a truly terrifying experience, despite the fact it was made over fifty years ago. The scenes set in a totally dead and still San Francisco and the sense of utter despondency when the crew of the US submarine find the real source of the Morse code message they had hoped would lead them to survivors, are riveting.… Read more

Post-traumatic noir part 2: Who’ll Stop The Rain

A while ago on this blog I wrote about the 1981 Ivan Passer movie, Cutter’s Way.

Based ased on the 1976 cult novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg, it’s one of the best crime films to deal with the impact of America’s war in Vietnam.

But it gets a run for it’s money by a little known film I’ve recently discovered, Who’ll Stop the Rain (AKA Dog Soldiers) made several years earlier in 1978.

Who’ll Stop the Rain a paranoid, hard-boiled road trip through America’s counter-cultural underbelly and a devastating indictment of the impact of the conflict.

The film opens with war correspondent John Converse (Michael Moriarty) trapped in the middle of friendly fire. His voice over as he surveys the resulting carnage tells us:

“Military command has decided that elephants are enemy agents because the Vietcong use them to carry supplies. So now we’re stampeding the elephants and gunning them down from the air…In a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high.”

A former liberal disgusted by the war, Converse decides to buy two kilos of uncut heroin in Saigon and smuggle it back to California, where he plans to sell it at an enormous profit.… Read more