Maxine/ You're not the only one...

.. who's been shot from that particular direction. However, in other cases - if the culprit is a teenage boy with a camera-cellphone, or a middle-aged businessman - he can get sued or prosecuted, or at least shamed. If it's the Canberra Times, then, it's a freedom of the press issue. Sorry. Grin and bear.

"The Omega Man"

In preparation for the impending release of Will Smith's I Am Legend, I watched the original Charlton Heston version of The Omega Man on DVD last week.

(I'm assuming studio executives vetoed some original plan by Mr Smith to title his remake "Tha Omega M###aF####a".)

There's something about those late 60s/ early 70s (post Forbidden Planet but pre-Star Wars) SF films that just can't be replicated. Whether the tight polyester clothes, the long slabs of speechifying, the low-budget special effects, or the loud, anthemic organ music... (you can hear a sample on YouTube here, if you have a good connection).

The DVD has extra material including a portentous mini-documentary, made at the time (1970s) where Heston interviews anthropologist Professor Ashley Montagu about the sociology and psychology of Robert Neville. Great stuff.

I kept expecting Heston to say "Damn you all to hell!" and "Get your damn paws off me, you dirty vampire!" I see now why he likes guns so much.

I also liked Anthony Zerbe's Matthias - a sort of Kent Brockman figure who morphs into Ward Churchill as played by Jim Steinman.