The Last Man on Earth (1964) 86m.
George Romero's knockout zombie film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD may have influenced many imitators from the late 60s on, but if you dig a little further back you'll find it had roots of its own in this AIP adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel 'I am Legend'. Vincent Price (who had already starred in half a dozen previous Matheson scripts) plays Robert Morgan, a scientist eking out a lonely existence in a world devastated by plague. The screenplay divides neatly into thirds: the first act looks at Price's daily routine, the second is a flashback tracing the antecedents of the apocalypse, and the third is a mini-drama contained within itself, with new characters and plot turns.
As it turned out, Matheson, who co-scripted the screenplay, disliked the finished result so much that he credited himself with a pseudonym. It's hard to tell what he may have been disappointed with but it could have been that THE LAST MAN ON EARTH isn't sufficiently scary. This is easier to take in retrospect because contemporary audiences don't expect old modestly-budgeted AIP productions to scare them anyhow. As far as horror is concerned, the film is let down by Sidney Salkow's lethargic direction of its monsters: the ghouls that surround Price's house, moaning his name and pounding ineffectually against the walls are strikingly redolent of the zombies from LIVING DEAD but far less frightening. It was a mistake of the film-makers to show Price - no he-man himself - pushing away marauders early on in the story (one potentially scary scene, when Price realises he has dozed off until the sunset, is otherwise spoiled); only much later in the film do we hear him explain that he doesn't really fear them due to their limited mental and physical state. Their slow, dazed state also pushes aside the vampire theme in the novel, which is treated sporadically here. Mirrors, garlic, and zombies? It doesn't quite add up.
Monsters aside, LAST MAN ON EARTH is worthy of attention from horror buffs. Instead of frights it offers a somber look at an entropic world. Life after the apocalypse isn't scary or exciting, just dull: Price performs daily rituals perfunctorily; the only time we see him listening to music is when he is drowning out the sound of the ghouls outside; his cars of choice are black, hearse-like stationwagons; his stooped figure wandering outdoors in bright, harsh sunlight becomes no more than a dried husk moving about in a lifeless world (even his name, Morgan, connotes death). In this film we start at the end and are then nudged along to the very end - there's one nice touch in a flashback when Price realises that the disease is airborne and the camera cuts to dead autumn leaves blowing in the wind. Price's saturnine persona works well in this film - he can see there's no point being hammy this time around - which makes the story's dramatic punctuations more effective (the bodies being consigned to the pit remind us disturbingly of the Holocaust). The film's low budget arguably works in its favor, too. We're not presented with city-wide panic, hysterical crowds, riots, or looting. Budgetary constraints limit our experience of the plague to a newspaper clipping, a few military trucks, and a growing detachment with friends and colleagues. The whole planet is just slowly winding down. THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is undeniably as much mood as it is concept, but its final line of dialogue does make the theme of the novel more patent: if there is one human living in a world of vampires, which becomes the monster? This gives one brief scene of Price attacking a young female ghoul - who cowers on a bed in fright - more weight than you may first think.
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