TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976)

Ehhh.  I was expecting better.  More suspense, more disaster, more Charlton Heston topless.

It's football time, so 91,000 fans pile into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on a bright sunny day to watch an exciting game between Los Angeles and Baltimore.  It's so exciting, in fact, that none of the 91,000 attendees notice the dude sitting on top of the scoreboard with a sniper rifle for nearly the entire game!!!  He's just sitting up there chilling, eating a Babe Ruth candy bar and staring down the scope of his rifle at various people.  Finally some genius on board the Goodyear blimp notices him and calls the cops.  They show up, brutalize a couple of innocent people and then eventually get around to confronting the sniper...94 minutes into the movie!!!  They do a horrible job at containing him and all Hell breaks loose.

As far as disaster films go, TWO-MINUTE WARNING is pretty weak.  The disaster (stampede) is all contained inside the stadium and if the police had done a better job of confronting the sniper nobody would have got hurt at all.  Top-billed Charlton Heston is alright as the police captain, but his role is very small.  The majority of the time is wasted showing the lives of various attendees: Jack Klugman as a idiot with a gambling problem, Walter Pidgeon as a pickpocket, David Janssen and Gena Rowlands as a couple who's relationship seems completely based on how much they can bitch at each other, Beau Bridges and Pamela Bellwood as a married couple with two children, etc.  All of their stories are boring and failed at persuaded me to care about any of them.

Mild pace, lackluster photography, soulless direction, unlikable characters, weak disaster, a man getting "butt-stroked", low body count.  Not a terrible film, just dated and meh.

THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

Los Angeles 1977.  Two years ago, biological warfare between China and Russia created a "plague" that killed most of the earth's population.  Now the only thing that's left is a pack of monk robe wearing nocturnal albino-mutant dorks (The Family) and Charlton Heston.  The albino nerds hate modern technology and education, since they see it as the reason for the humans downfall, so they spend their nights rummaging around a deserted Los Angeles burning books and destroying stuff.  Charlton, on the other hand, seems to be about half insane and spends his time searching for The Family's hideout, talking to himself and rubbing his flabby chest.  That is until one day when Charlton sees another human...or did he?

The idea for THE OMEGA MAN is great and full of endless potential and who knows maybe back in 1971 this was seen as an awesome film, but watching it now it's totally weak.  The sets looked like TV show sets, there are multiple instances of human movement in the background during the daytime scenes, the camerawork was amateur to the point of being distracting, it's never explained if there are still animals or not, the Family hates Charlton and know where he lives but yet they can't seem to be able to destroy the building he lives in (hint: burn down the entire block!), heavy-handed messiah theme, Charlton Heston taking his shirt off to give us a full pectical spectacle( ...which, I guess, is better than him taking his pants off and giving us a testicle spectacle), terrible acting by the Family background actors, Charlton's horrible time-keeping skills, Charlton repeatedly lays his gun down and walks off...that said, I actually ended up liking the film.  It's just sooo cheesy that you can't help but smirk nearly the entire time.

Not really recommended for younger audience since they will probably just sit there confused at the dated stuff and the poor filmmaking, but curious older audiences will probably get a kick out of it.

Reflection of tree never moves the entire time the helicopter is supposedly spinning out of control.