And the Movie Answer is…

Wow. When I read a question from a viewer regarding finding out the name of a movie this past weekend, little did I expect the response that we got. Over 400 viewers were ready to help out a fellow horror fan, and , quite honestly, it was heart-warming to see that huge response! Here’s how it started- during the mail segment on “The Mummy’s Ghost”, I read an e-mail from a viewer named Chris who asked for help in naming a movie that he had seen years ago. He said “there was a movie that came out in the 70s about people who get a disease. The people’s hair turns white, and they wear black and sunglasses. In the end one man finds the cure in his blood, but he is killed and dies in a water fountain. He is holding test tubes with the cure.” Well, even though I did know what the movie was- it had slipped my mind, so I asked you- the fans- to help find the answer for Chris. You responded like a mega-force! As I said, over 400 people responded, including those who left the answer on Facebook. Almost everybody said that it was the 1971 movie “The Omega Man”- and that guy who dies in the fountain is none other than-Charlton Heston! The movie was yet another adaptation of the excellent 1954 Richard Matheson book- “I Am Legend”-which, quite honestly, I read long before I ever saw one of the movies based on it. Basically, it’s the story of a man stuck in a world where most of the civilization has, thanks to a disease that ran rampant, become very similar to -vampires! He tries to survive in Los Angeles, somehow being immune to the disease, but not immune to attacks by the vampires. This story has been turned into any number of movies- it has even been mentioned as an inspiration for “Night of the Living Dead”. Vincent Price starred in the first film version that I recall, “The Last Man on Earth”, a 1964 film- remade next as the movie in question, “The Omega Man”- which deviated from the novel in a few ways-with Heston as the immune survivor. Some of the white-haired diseased- who did NOT seem to be full-on vampires, but were sensitive to light- hence the sunglasses- almost seemed to be wearing white Harpo Marx wigs- but, there was nothing comedic about this flick-it had plenty of scares and lots of tension. When Heston finds a lovely, “uninfected” woman, played By Rosalind Cash, along with another man, he finds out they are among a group of survivors who seem to have more of a resistance to the disease, but may still succumb to it. Not to belabor the spoiler already given, yes, Heston finds a cure using his blood- and, yes, he dies in a fountain. I’m sure many more people recall the more recent Will Smith version of the story, “I Am Legend”, made in 2007. Anyway, it seems that the Heston version is the one Chris was trying to remember. I found it interesting that some of the fans supplying the answer also took that opportunity to say that, having provided the answer, they deserved a t-shirt or a rubber chicken. Actually, let me just extend to all of you who responded that you have my undying thanks- which, I’m sure, is worth much more than any reward… Hmmm- I’m almost out of time, and don’t really have the space to plug the upcoming Sven appearances- this Friday night in Munster Indiana at the “Wine and Cheese” event before the “Little Shop of Horrors” production at the Theater at the Center- or my Saturday visit to the Godzilla Con “G-Fest in Rosemont!” So- let me get to that in tomorrow’s blog- or, just check under the “appearances” tag here on our site!