From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie The Last Man on Earth released in 1964.
Starring:
Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli
Directed by:
Ubaldo Ragona (as Ubaldo B. Ragona), Sidney Salkow
Genre:
Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
Not Rated
Budget:
$300,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.9
The Synopsis is:
When a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.
Story:
The story’s origin may have began all the way back to the novel, The Last Man by Mary Shelley, published in 1826. It is a dystopian science fiction depiction of a 21st Century Earth experiencing a pandemic that nearly wipes out humanity. In spite of its lack of success, Mary regarded it as one of her favorite works.
The book influenced the silent comedy film, The Last Man on Earth released in 1924, where a plague wipes out all the men and the main character is being sought after all of the women alive.
The movie then inspired the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson which basically seems to take off where Mary Shelly’s novel left off and updated it for the modern age. As well, the character of of Dracula inspired him as well. Richard originally wrote a script for a film in 1957 for Hammer Films with Fritz Lang to direct. The project fell apart and into the hands of Robert L. Lippert, who produced the film in Italy with American International Pictures.
William F. Leicester was brought in to tweak the screenplay along with the director, Ubaldo Ragona.
The plot remained the same except there was a change to the main character's name from Robert Neville to Robert Morgan.
The story is as basic as it gets with a lot of somber moments following the daily life of the protagonist. At the mid point we finally get a backstory about the plague and how drastically normal life changed for Robert and then the audience gets to sit with his anguish before ramping up into an action flick.
Pacing:
At 1h 26min, I love it when these films are short and sweet. The film is well paced for the kind of story it’s telling.
Challenge:
The challenge in this film is the situation of our protagonist, being the last man left on earth after a plague has turned all of the people in his town into vampires. These aren’t the vampires we’re used to. They act more like zombies.
I usually dislike zombies with a passion. They totally freak me out. But I love vampires, so they pulled me right back into the story.
In this film there are vampires that are lifeless by day. They just fall down in the middle of the street wherever they are. However they reanimate by night seeking out the few living humans left for their blood. They move really slow and they have a very limited vocabulary. However, whenever they speak, it's incredibly scary.
Then there are half breeds, infected humans that have been given a vaccine. They look a lot like the vampires, but they actually sleep in beds and try to live between existences.
At first you think that there is no consistency, because we don’t find out everything about the vampires until the end. However, what we do know about them is that they follow a few vampire tropes of not liking crucifixes, garlic, or mirrors. With mirrors in particular, they can see a reflection, but they don’t like it. Sunlight doesn’t destroy them, but puts them to sleep. It’s a twist on the lore, but I think it actually works well as a possible result of a plague.
One big difference between the creatures in the book vs the film, that caused some criticism, the book had them as fast moving and agile. The film’s version was sluggish and slow-moving. I thought that the slow movement added to the anticipation of fear. It also displayed how our protagonist could overpower them and survive them for so long.
However, I think logically from a filmmaking point of view, it was probably easier to have the vampire zombies more clumsy and slow to save production on action scenes choreography.
Empathy:
The empathy really worked for me, pulling me into the daily mundane events of Doctor Robert Morgan, the only man left alive on Earth after the plague. His story unfolds on screen as he lives day to day in solitude in fear and has self appointed himself as a vampire hunter to rid the empty world of the infected.
We watch him set out on his day coldly picking up what appears to be the dead and burning them. Hunting and finding sleeping vampires and killing them with a stake before burning them as well. The story slowly builds asking the question, what is he doing now? Oh, and what is he doing now? Oh, and what is he doing now? It’s an interesting way to introduce the character and build a sympathetic bond with him.
At the mid point of the film we get a flashback of how this all happened. This reveals that Robert is grieving the devastating loss of his daughter, his wife and everyone he knew to the plague. He has come to the understanding that he may be immune to the disease because he was bitten by a Peruvian bat ages ago. You would think that his daughter would then be immune as well, but that was not the case.
Every night he lives in fear as the walking dead try to get inside his home and in particular his old friend who is now a vampire zombie says his name over and over again in a very creepy way. It’s very chilling as he says some terrible things to him in a monotone voice.
He’s lonely, so he finds a dog, but the dog got infected, but then he finds a girl. She too turns out to be infected. The film flips the story on it’s head as we discover that she is part of a larger group of survivors who have been given a vaccine that temporarily keeps the infection at bay. It turns out, all of those sleeping vampires he killed with a stake were one of her kind and he was the legend of a monster to them, hence the book title “I Am Legend”.
She had been sent to him to find out what he knew before they brought their militia to kill him. It’s interesting because although you feel a little sorry for him when he dies, there's also a strange feeling of hope for these hybrids.
He says that he is the last man alive, as if the infected were not humans anymore. It’s a bit of an elitist position to find something to animalize the enemy. By suggesting they aren’t human, it justifies his killing of them in his mind. You could even say that he was not actually human either, since he was bitten by the bat and he did not respond to the plague the way other humans did.
Technical:
The production of this film was really quite minimal and simple to an extent, which I enjoyed considering there are so many ways to complicate it with visual and special effects. It was filmed in Rome with Italian cast and crew except for Vincent Price to save money.
They did a fairly good job of making the scenery outdoors look like an abandoned town, which is extremely hard to do, even for big productions. However, on some shots, you can see moving cars and individuals in the distance.
Though pretty stark, the setting was well staged for a very simple and relatively believable effect. I think shooting in Italy and featuring their modern buildings helped to sell the effect further since this was to be in a future world from 1964. I thought that was a nice touch.
The make up effects were a bit touch and go. For the time, I suppose it works just enough to translate what's happening. Again, everything was done very simply. I love that. It actually helped to make the story believable and not a monster movie. It grounded the story in a plain realism.
The only part of this I wish could have been tweaked is the strength of Robert’s house, or fort if you will. It was very fragile and barely fortified to sustain attack, and I think that was one thing that didn’t work. However, there was a verifiable fear that the creatures would enter his house at any moment. Maybe because they are vampires, they need to be invited in.
The cinematography in particular was not particularly beautiful, but it had a way of pulling you into the moment. In many instances the camera holds on Robert for a long time so we can feel the weight of time on him. That was a brilliant move, so the audience could feel connected to the character.
I actually wouldn’t have minded a little more time spent on the scenes that got cut into a montage. I wanted just a little more grit to the visual story.
Other critics of the movie had some trouble with the actual quality of the film, which I agree with. But again, this was a low budget film, with high aspirations for box office sales.
Performances:
At the time Vincent Price shot a handful of films with American International Pictures in Italy such as The Haunted Palace 1963, The Comedy of Terrors, The Masque of the Red Death and this one, The Last Man on Earth all in 1964.
I thought Vincent Price approached the story with a very theatrical charisma. He just can’t help it. He’s Vincent Price for crying out loud. But what I loved about his performance was that it was the most realistic role I’ve seen him play. He toned down his showmanship and when he needed to pull the audience into his character’s psychology, he used it. I must confess that this is my favorite version of the protagonist from the “I Am Legend” adaptations that I have seen.
He made some interesting choices that helped his character feel more realistic, such as insisting to actually carry real people instead of dummies in the scenes where he’s cleaning up town. Meanwhile, you can visibly see that he’s taking extra care to place them in his car. In the scene it looks like the character respects them and feels some emotion toward them because they used to be real people that possibly he knew in the town.
Later, Vincent admitted to being quite fond of the film and preferred it over other adaptations.
Unfortunately, Vincent Price is the only cast member that actually has a decent performance. Everyone else were Italian actors who did not speak English. They spoke their lines phonetically without knowing what the words actually meant. It was typical for them to shoot without sound and then dub the English voice actors in post production. It almost always never matched pulling the audience out of the film.
If you are like me, the dubs could be a source of comedy or B-movie charm. I’m never upset by them, because they didn’t understand how it undermined their films.
Enjoyment:
The film was not a success at the box office and met with strong criticism from the author of I Am Legend and the screenwriter, Richard Matheson and asked to be credited as Logan Swanson. He didn’t like Vincent Price’s performance and in later years he said that his ideal film would star Harrison Ford and be directed by George Miller.
Over the years the film grew a little more respect and appreciation for being an old school thriller and a classic for the post apocalyptic genre.
The film entered the public domain in the 1980s. I found it for free on YouTube
Director George A. Romero said that this film was a huge inspiration for the horror movie classic "Night of the Living Dead (1968).
A few movies featuring zombies or zombie like creatures before, The Last Man on Earth include:
- White Zombie 1932
- Things To Come 1934
- Revolt of the Zombies 1936
- The Devil's Daughter 1939
- King of the Zombies 1941
- Revenge of the Zombies 1943
- I Walked with a Zombie 1943
- Dead Men Walk 1943
- Voodoo Man 1944
- Zombies on Broadway 1945
- Zombies of Mora Tau 1957
- Teenage Zombies 1959
- Plan 9 from Outer Space 1959
- Invisible Invaders 1959
- The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake 1959
- The Curse of the Doll People 1961
- Carnival of Souls 1962
- Santo vs. the Zombies 1962
- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies 1964
The Last Man on Earth was remade as "The Omega Man (1971)" starring Charlton Heston, which was my introduction to the property and a childhood favorite. It also underwent another remake in 2007 as I Am Legend starring Will Smith, which I didn't enjoy as much.
Interestingly enough a television show emerged in 2015 called The Last Man on Earth created by and starring Will Forte. It hung out for four seasons until 2018.
I can't believe this but I only saw this for the first time in April of 2020 on a recommendation from one of you. I had chills watching this film as it actually looked like times to come. If fighting off vampire zombies wasn’t going to happen during that time, at least I could identify with the dismal loneliness that was portrayed in the film as well as the desolation of the streets we commonly used in 2019. Another corresponding feature of the times were the moments where our protagonist was very dismissive of the plague until it ultimately engulfs his world. It felt so realistic and even shocking that the imagination could land so many probable ideas.
This is an excellent example of a film that is creepy without any gore framed in a compelling unveiling of the lore of the film. I am a big fan of this version of the book, I Am Legend and so far, even as simply as it is portrayed, it’s my favorite telling of the tale.
My Rating:
8.8
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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