Movie review: Omega Cop (1989)
When civilization ends in Omega Cop (1989) it does so coupled with narration by Adam West. He urgently whispers about a world which ignored an environmental collapse until it was far too late, while visually the camera fades from one sunrise to the same sunrise to the same sunrise again. This opening scene perfectly sets the tone for what is to follow. Its intent is dark and ominous, but the presentation is slightly off-kilter and tinged with silliness.
If you’re looking for a genre to slip Omega Cop into, you’ll find a lot of possible slots. There’s a sci-fi element. It’s a post-apocalyptic nightmare world. There are elements of action movies and cop movies. It looks kind of 1970s Italian, although it was filmed entirely in southern California. It certainly borrows heavily from Westerns (the spaghetti and pasta-free varieties).
The eponymous Omega Cop is — as his name suggests — the last law enforcement official left in a world populated mostly by gangsters and scavengers. These dregs of society are concerned mostly with the lively slave trade and settling old scores. One thing I’ve noticed in films of this kind is that apocalypse survivors always have great stylish coats. The Burlington Coat Factory must be high on their list of targets after food, water and shelter.
The last bastion of humanity is represented by Adam West in a sparsely decorated set, sitting in an office chair and wryly snarling insults into a CB radio. He’s in charge of a protected bunker, deep under the Earth’s surface. From there he directs the area’s remaining police in their duties of protecting the citizens and hunting down slave traders.
Caught half-way between the outlaws and the ex-Batman is the Omega Cop (although he doesn’t actually become the Omega Cop until 17 minutes into the film). His fellow officers are gunned down during a raid and because of a solar flare, Adam West bans him from the bunker. Stuck on the surface, the Omega Cop (also known as Travis, as played by Ron Marchini) roams the wasteland, rescuing various women from grizzly fates and occasionally calling Adam West and demanding to be let in.
OMEGA COP is a difficult movie to hate, but it’s an even more difficult movie to like. It’s full of delightfully un-self-aware dialog:
Travis: “Just check it out. No heroics.”
Al: “I’ll be back in five.”
Travis: “Al… Be careful.”
(That’s an actual exchange.)
Travis seems like a decent enough bloke although his methods are a bit suspect. He rescues three women: a blond ex-slave lady, the leggy daughter of a junk dealer, and a woman in a white dress who literally spends the majority of her screen-time unconscious. As far as I could tell, the two conscious female characters were indistinguishable other than their hair color and cup size. Despite his good intentions, his commando raid on a slave ring seems to involve a lot of indiscriminate shooting at anyone who happens to wander near the front-end of his weapon. Slaves, spectators, traders and hostages are mercilessly blown away at approximately equal rates.
The story is a little bit on the confused side. On one hand, it has all the hallmarks of a standard quest drama. You would expect Travis and his increasing tribe to be attempting to make their way somewhere safe. The problem is that they already know where safety is; Adam West simply won’t unlock the door. This renders a lot of their journey pointless.
There is a villain in the story. A guy named Wraith — who dresses like the Leatherman from the Village People — is the area’s main slave trader. He appears to have a preexisting grudge against Travis, although the details are left strangely vague. Adding to the story is a mysterious “solar flare” which turns anyone exposed into an “infected” raving, homicidal maniac. I’ve heard of airborne infections and I’ve heard of waterborne infections; this is the first I’ve heard of sunborne infections. I hope I never catch one, because I doubt I could chew the scenery as vigorously as this illness would require.
Due to a lack of real plot, most of the film is really just an exercise in fight scenes. In the future, hand-to-hand combat will be replaced by mostly hand-to-crotch combat or foot-to-crotch combat. This film features more punched groins per minute than any other film I can think of.
To drive home the post-apocalyptic setting (which is relatively well realized), many of the outdoor locations are littered with extras playing dead. Some of them dangle upside down off of fences, while others simply lie face down in the sand. I wonder if the actors union demands a sliding scale of payment depending on the difficulty level of your corpse acting. In addition to the people-as-props motif, during the apocalypse people have scattered a lot of crumpled newspapers in the streets.
Omega Cop is an odd little film. It’s hard to know what to make of a film where the hero constantly listens to “oldies” (a public domain Beach Boys sound-alike) and takes up five minutes of screen-time chasing down his missing hat. It’s fun in a way. It may take itself seriously, but that’s no reason why you should.
This review was originally posted January 2011.
