Yes, yes…the doomsday scenario in Omega Man was biological warfare not nuclear holocaust. It was still a scenery-chewing performance from Mr. Heston.
I haven't seen it since 1970 but I remember that at the end, Heston died — he died in a lot of his films, it seems to me — and with his arms extended to suggest a Christ-on-the-cross pose. There was a line of dialogue where someone said something like, "Was he Jesus Christ?" And throughout the Criterion Theater in Santa Monica — and, I'm guessing in other movie houses around the country — you could hear everyone yell back at the screen, "No, you idiot! He's Moses!"
One other thing I recall. When Heston was playing in Detective Story down at the Ahmanson, I was dating a lady who was madly in love with him. She asked me not just to get tickets for the play but to get them as close as possible to the stage. I think she said, "If they sell tickets where I can sit on his lap during the play, I want those."
At the time, I had a friend who could get tickets to anything. You had to give him many, many pictures of deceased presidents but he could get you tickets to anything. If I'd spent enough, he probably could have gotten her onto Charlton Heston's lap but I settled for Front Row Center. The tix were not cheap so I felt entitled to play a little joke. I didn't tell her where our seats were and when we got to the Ahmanson, I led her to the last row of the top balcony, all the way on the end. The worst seats in the place. She made a comment about never having sex with me again and making sure I never had it with anyone else…whereupon I checked the stubs and announced, "Oh, wait! I had the tickets upside down," and I led her down to the front row.
She loved the seats up until the end. You'll never see this play so I'll ruin it for you and explain that Heston's character gets shot and dies at the conclusion. This involved much agonizing and screaming and final words and overacted dying gasps. It also involved some pretty realistic pyrotechnics and way too much stage blood. A lot of the bogus blood spurted out of Mr. Heston and onto the luckless folks at Front Row Center, and we went home looking like survivors of a medium-sized train wreck. A few years later, Gallagher would do the same closing bit except that his version involved a sledge hammer and a watermelon. And it was almost as funny.