There’s a scene in Charlton Heston’s 1971 movie, The Ωmega Man, which I think means the last mega man, where he kills a guy—what are those things? Black people in whiteface? Was that a thing in the’70s?—anyhow, after some prolonged thrashing about, he eventually kills a guy by ligature strangulation using his belt with the help of leverage from a table edge. A very dramatic and violent scene.
Later on, he taunts an enemy with the story of the confrontation, saying, “He died badly.”
In my head, I have always vividly imagined that dying badly at the hands of Charlton Heston would involve having a belt wrapped around your neck while being strangled and raped to death by Charlton Heston. Strangled and sodomized (surprisingly, no autocomplete for that word) by the sweaty hairy human from the Planet of dem Apes until you be dead. It seems pretty bad to me. Would he whisper in your ear as you lost consciousness? It makes me shiver in horror just thinking about it.
When I told my kids that, you know, dying badly by being strangled and raped to death by a hairy, sweaty Charlton Heston would be, well, one terrible way of dying badly, they suggested that maybe there was something wrong with me; that it was my fault for thinking like that. I disagreed, and explained over and over again, that maybe they weren’t getting the right idea. The more I tried to explain, the more judgmental they became. Really, I mean, come on man, what could be worse than dying from being strangled and raped to death by Charlton Heston?
I’ll stop there, since I feel like this post might get censored for its political incorrectness. Charlton Heston was a big 2A advocate, and I wouldn’t want to upset anyone.
—DG.
Inside Doug's Head 