September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

• Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
• September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

Charlton Heston is such a complex person. He’s the patron saint of apocalyptic movies, appearing in Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and this movie. He was also in so many religious movies, including The Ten Commandments as Moses, as well as Ben-Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

He could march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in 1963, while being the President of the NRA from 1998 to 2003, saying that the government could only take away his guns if they took them from his cold, dead hands. He was a liberal from 1955 to 1961 and endorsed liberal candidates until 1972. However, he also served as President of the Screen Actors’ Guild from 1965 to 1971, a position that clashed with the liberal views of Ed Asner. After the death of the Kennedys, he worked to push gun control laws. But by 1972, he rejected the liberalism of George McGovern and supported Nixon. But at one stage in his life, the Democratic Party asked him to run for the Senate against George Murphy.

By the 1980s, he would say,  “I didn’t change. The Democratic Party changed.” He also had a huge speech, “Fighting the Cultural War,” in which he said. “The Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of wise old dead white guys who invented our country! Now, some flinch when I say that. Why! It’s true … they were white guys! So were most of the guys who died in Lincoln’s name opposing slavery in the 1860s. So why should I be ashamed of white guys? Why is “Hispanic Pride” or “Black Pride” a good thing, while “White Pride” conjures shaven heads and white hoods? Why was the Million Man March on Washington celebrated by many as a sign of progress, while the Promise Keepers March on Washington was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I’ll tell you why: Cultural warfare!”

He was complicated. Unlike many today, he was non-binary and not in sexuality. In the way he saw things, but by the end, he could also be frustrating.

Speaking of the end…

The Omega Man is the second movie — after The Last Man On Earth — based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Unlike the book, humanity has died off because of biological warfare, not a plague. U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D. (Heston) is one of the few survivors, figuring out a vaccine to the plague, which turns humans into vampire-like monsters. The Family, as they are called, is led by former anchorman Jonathan Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) and is at war with Neville.

Neville soon learns that others, like Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and Dutch (Paul Koslo), have survived. He’s able to give Lisa’s brother, Richie (Eric Laneuville), the vaccine, and the young man wants to save the lives of The Family, too. Instead, they kill him, which leads to a mutually exclusive battle of destruction, made even more horrible for the hero because Lisa, the woman he loves, has fallen victim to the plague and sells him out.

Director Boris Sagal died while filming another end-of-the-world movie, the TV miniseries World War 3, walking into the blades of a helicopter by accident. This was written by the husband-and-wife writing team of John and Joyce H. Corrington.

This has one of the first interracial kisses in cinema (but not the first). Rosalind Cash said to Heston, “It’s a spooky feeling to screw Moses.” He discussed this on Whoopi Goldberg’s TV show, and she was finishing the interview by saying that she wished that society could get past interracial relationships being an issue. He agreed and then gave her a huge kiss.

You know who wasn’t happy about this film? Or really didn’t care? Richard Matheson, who said, “The Omega Man was so removed from my book that it didn’t even bother me.” He said of The Last Man On Earth, “I was disappointed in The Last Man on Earth, even though they more or less followed my story. I think Vincent Price, whom I love in every one of his pictures that I wrote, was miscast. I also felt the direction was kind of poor.” Before the Will Smith remake, I Am Legend, started filming, he said, “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated by my book when they never care to film it as I wrote it.”

Supposedly, the scene in which Heston’s character watches Woodstock inspired Joel Hodgson to create Mystery Science Theater 3000. I want to think that that is true.