TCM, for some arcane reason, is running a post-apocalyptic movie night tonight. They opened with The Omega Man, the movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend. It's been made into movies at least four times, and was the inspiration for Roger Corman's Night of the Living Dead. Making a long story short, as the result of a biowar virtually all of humanity is either dead to transformed into creatures who are blind by day and react badly to sunlight, but are fine at night.
The story is set in Los Angeles, and follows a US Army research doctor who is both trying to stay alive and devise a serum to cure the survivors of the biologic agent that transformed them. Unfortunately, the nightwalkers in L.A. are under the influence of an insane prophet named Matthias who has convinced them they have been chosen by God to redeem the world and start over again, rejecting technology higher than the Dark Ages. But that is not my point.
When the movie begins, the doctor has survived in a depopulated Los Angeles for two years. He has set himself up in a penthouse apartment with its own garage, and installed a diesel generator in the basement powerful enough to support his penthouse, the garage, and the elevator in the building, which can be manually switched on and off. He can move around the city with a reasonable amount of impunity by day, and the nightwalkers can't get at him as long as he stays in the light. At night, he holes up in his apartment, which is protected by doors welded shut, blocked windows, barbed wire, and heavy machine guns. This does not prevent Matthias's nightwalkers from coming after the doctor, because they have learned where he lives; but it does make attempts to capture and execute him as the last representative of technological man costly to the nightwalkers. Please note that these nightwalkers still have working brains; they are not zombies and they are not vampires, even if Matthias has them brainwashed to do his bidding a la Charles Manson and the Manson Family.
What can be learned from this film?
To begin with, there's a lot of hubris in the doctor's continuing to inhabit a known location when the bad guys know where he lives. I think we can all agree that given the parameters of the villains, he would have done better to get out of town and set up his base somewhere where he can establish a beaten fire zone where he can put his heavy military weaponry to good use, preferably underground, or at least made out of non-flammable materials. One of the military bases east or south of Los Angeles might be ideal. Heading into the mountains northeast of L.A. might do. He would be close enough to the city to mine it for food, medical supplies, research equipment, etc. but far enough away that the nightwalkers probably would not be able to find him or trail him. There are tricks we all know to make it difficult to track him back to his base/home.
He also might be able to set up some kind of a truck garden, perhaps even farm animals. (It was not established that animals are vulnerable to the sme pathogen which wiped out humanity.) Yes, with humanity wiped out there is enough canned food in warehouses and stores in the Greater Los Angeles area to feed him for the rest of his life, not even taking what is on the shelves of homes in the city into account. Think of the onlies in the Star Trek TOS episode Miri. The kids had been on their own for a couple of hundred years without leaving the city/town they were in, probably more than a hundred of them originally, maybe twenty or so remaining at the start of the episode; and only then were they coming to the end of the food supply. If he went out into the Imperial Valley he could farm whatever he liked, pick one farm as his base, set up defenses, and go about his self-imposed mission of finding a cure for the nightwalkers in more safety than hanging out in a dead city.
He never went anywhere unarmed, favoring a Carl Gustav M45 submachine gun as his personal sidearm, though he also used an M1911A1 and what looked like a BAR with infrared sights against the nightwalkers. Surprisingly, he made no use of hand grenades, though on one occasion he used some sort of pyrotechnic satchel charge. Even granting he is a military doctor, he was proficient enough with weapons to set up Ma Deuces at his penthouse and kill the bad guys with a minimum expenditure of ammunition. No infinite repeaters in that movie! He also was smart enough to know there is no cavalry to come over the hill blowing the Charge, so engaged only when he must. Short bursts, center mass, move on.
So, as I see it he did two dumb things and one smart one. Two years in the post-apocalyptic city had taught him to shoot straight, but they didn't teach him that when you're the mouse at the cat show, you don't go out of your way to attract the attention of the cats. That may be the most important lesson The Omega Man has to teach us.
The story is set in Los Angeles, and follows a US Army research doctor who is both trying to stay alive and devise a serum to cure the survivors of the biologic agent that transformed them. Unfortunately, the nightwalkers in L.A. are under the influence of an insane prophet named Matthias who has convinced them they have been chosen by God to redeem the world and start over again, rejecting technology higher than the Dark Ages. But that is not my point.
When the movie begins, the doctor has survived in a depopulated Los Angeles for two years. He has set himself up in a penthouse apartment with its own garage, and installed a diesel generator in the basement powerful enough to support his penthouse, the garage, and the elevator in the building, which can be manually switched on and off. He can move around the city with a reasonable amount of impunity by day, and the nightwalkers can't get at him as long as he stays in the light. At night, he holes up in his apartment, which is protected by doors welded shut, blocked windows, barbed wire, and heavy machine guns. This does not prevent Matthias's nightwalkers from coming after the doctor, because they have learned where he lives; but it does make attempts to capture and execute him as the last representative of technological man costly to the nightwalkers. Please note that these nightwalkers still have working brains; they are not zombies and they are not vampires, even if Matthias has them brainwashed to do his bidding a la Charles Manson and the Manson Family.
What can be learned from this film?
To begin with, there's a lot of hubris in the doctor's continuing to inhabit a known location when the bad guys know where he lives. I think we can all agree that given the parameters of the villains, he would have done better to get out of town and set up his base somewhere where he can establish a beaten fire zone where he can put his heavy military weaponry to good use, preferably underground, or at least made out of non-flammable materials. One of the military bases east or south of Los Angeles might be ideal. Heading into the mountains northeast of L.A. might do. He would be close enough to the city to mine it for food, medical supplies, research equipment, etc. but far enough away that the nightwalkers probably would not be able to find him or trail him. There are tricks we all know to make it difficult to track him back to his base/home.
He also might be able to set up some kind of a truck garden, perhaps even farm animals. (It was not established that animals are vulnerable to the sme pathogen which wiped out humanity.) Yes, with humanity wiped out there is enough canned food in warehouses and stores in the Greater Los Angeles area to feed him for the rest of his life, not even taking what is on the shelves of homes in the city into account. Think of the onlies in the Star Trek TOS episode Miri. The kids had been on their own for a couple of hundred years without leaving the city/town they were in, probably more than a hundred of them originally, maybe twenty or so remaining at the start of the episode; and only then were they coming to the end of the food supply. If he went out into the Imperial Valley he could farm whatever he liked, pick one farm as his base, set up defenses, and go about his self-imposed mission of finding a cure for the nightwalkers in more safety than hanging out in a dead city.
He never went anywhere unarmed, favoring a Carl Gustav M45 submachine gun as his personal sidearm, though he also used an M1911A1 and what looked like a BAR with infrared sights against the nightwalkers. Surprisingly, he made no use of hand grenades, though on one occasion he used some sort of pyrotechnic satchel charge. Even granting he is a military doctor, he was proficient enough with weapons to set up Ma Deuces at his penthouse and kill the bad guys with a minimum expenditure of ammunition. No infinite repeaters in that movie! He also was smart enough to know there is no cavalry to come over the hill blowing the Charge, so engaged only when he must. Short bursts, center mass, move on.
So, as I see it he did two dumb things and one smart one. Two years in the post-apocalyptic city had taught him to shoot straight, but they didn't teach him that when you're the mouse at the cat show, you don't go out of your way to attract the attention of the cats. That may be the most important lesson The Omega Man has to teach us.