The Last Man On Earth (1964) - With The Last Spoilers On Earth

The first film adaptation of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson's horror masterpiece, this Italian production opens promisingly. A deserted city at dawn, filmed in washed out black and white. Bodies and abandoned cars litter the streets. A church sign proclaims that "The end has come." Inside a boarded up house, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) wakes up to the jangle of an alarm clock and begins to go through his daily routine. Mark off the date on a makeshift calendar scribbled on the wall - the year is 1967. Check for the pungency of garlic strings hanging from his doors. Top off the fuel in his generator. Clear up the bodies on his front lawn. Have some coffee. Check his shortwave radio for any sign of life. Then start making stakes on the lathe in his living room for the day's hunt.

Because Robert Morgan (Robert Neville in the book) is the last human left on a planet of vampires.

The Last Man on Earth follows the book closely, which is not surprising, given that Richard Matheson had a hand in writing the script. The two main points of departure are the excising of a significant part of the book that details Neville's attempt to gain a scientific understanding of the plague and the ending, in which Morgan's blood might be a cure for the disease; in the novel, there is no cure. Of the three direct adaptations - the other two being The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007) - The Last Man on Earth is the most faithful, including key plot points that are not in the other two films.

The most important of these is the inclusion of two types of vampires; the almost mindless, zombie-like monsters that surround Morgan's house and a second strain that is intelligent. The latter is in the process of forming a new society. They view Morgan - who, unaware that there two species of vampire, has been indiscriminately killing both - as a threat. Morgan realizes that by his actions, he has become a boogeyman-like figure in the new vampire civilization (a vampire's vampire) and as such will live on in their stories forever, the last example of the dead race of Man (this point is more explicit in the novel). It also provides another perspective on Morgan's struggle to survive, in the sense that societies look at any outsider as a threat - as a monster - even if they engage in the same actions to ensure their own survival. In both the book and film, the vampire society is also hunting down their feral cousins with a brutality equal to that of Morgan.

Although hampered by a low budget and some clumsy dialogue, the film does have a number of strengths. Vincent Price does a convincing job conveying a necessary numbness, while giving way to moments of rage and despair. He is someone suffering from an ongoing traumatic stress disorder. His struggle for survival is presented as a monotonous series of chores, not an exciting "Robinson Crusoe-esque" adventure. While there are elements of this genre of survival fiction present - we see how Morgan has transformed his home into a workshop, how he has stockpiled food, etc - the film deconstructs them, making them more dully realistic and, in some cases, sinister.

Morgan's daily "chores" - replacing garlic, making stakes, his door-to-door search for the undead, an endless nightmare of staking and burnings - is effectively demonstrated as necessary for his survival, yet ultimately pointless; there is no one left who isn't a vampire. His attacks on the undead are not rousing actions sequences; they are presented as Morgan descending on lone, sleeping creatures, who have been shown to be weak, uncoordinated and posing little threat on their own or even in groups. The pointlessness of his task is demonstrated effectively in a brief scene where Morgan is plotting out the day's hunt on a map. Even with such a pathetic adversary, in the years since the plague, Morgan has only managed to clear out a small part of his city. It is never explained why he thinks the vampires wouldn't just migrate back into the cleared areas. At this point in the film all the viewers know is that the entire human race has either died or been turned into slow-moving monsters. In theory, he could be faced with having to stake millions of vampires, a Sisyphean task.

Set design also plays an important thematic role. Morgan's house, his island in the sea of vampires, at first glance is impressive with its living room lathe and radio set-up, the huge refrigerators of food and garlic, the garage generator allowing for some comforts (home movies and a stereo). On closer examination, however, this staple of survival fiction (the comfortable and safe home hacked out of the dangerous wilderness) is shown to be lacking. After three years, Morgan has yet to board up his windows with anything more than a few two-by-fours. While adequate to keep out the vampires (another indication of how little they actually threaten him) they seem laughable as a defense. Why not install shutters or metal bars? The vampires have little strength, pitifully pounding on his front door with whatever debris they can find. Why not put up a fence and keep them away from the house (and provide Morgan with a little peace and quiet, since he is obviously bothered by the constant noise)? While one could write this off as an issue of the film's low-budget, everything about the home mise-en-scene points to a purposeful goal, a planned visual theme. The walls are hung with askew paintings. There is no division between work space and personal space. Morgan sleeps in a cluttered room, on an unmade bed, fully-clothed. This is the environment of trauma. It is survival stripped of purpose, the mechanics of life when there is no future.

Dressed for post-apocalyptic success.

When he inevitably finds his "Friday" (Ruth Collins, played by Franca Bettoia) the film (and book) turn this genre standard on its head. Instead of becoming the faithful companion (and mother of a new human race with the help of a potent hero) she turns out to be an intelligent vampire, sent to spy on him. Her ultimate mission; to set him up to be killed by her brethren. She provides him with no comfort, telling him his daily vampire hunts have resulted in the deaths of many of her friends and that he is viewed by the new society as a monster worse than the shambling corpses outside his door.

In the world of The Last Man on Earth human survival is, at best, a lonely, agonizing exercise in dull terror and endlessly repetitive tasks with no ultimate meaning.

On a technical level, the film is uneven. Some of the imagery is unsettling and has gone on to become genre standards. The burn pit at the edge of the city where the corpses of first plague victims and later the vampires Morgan dispatches are burned, where the fires never end. The gas mask wearing troops loading bodies into trucks, then tossing them into the pit like garbage. The shambling hordes of the undead trying to break into a boarded-up house (George Romero acknowledges that both I Am Legend and The Last Man on Earth influenced Night of the Living Dead). The empty cityscapes, conveying a dead world. The dirt covered, reanimated corpse of Morgan's wife, come back from the grave and waiting for him at his door.

However, the film has its weaknesses. The day-for-night sequences are painfully obvious. The flashbacks which show life before and during the plague are bland; while they serve to explain the background of the world, they are dull, are hampered by poor dialogue and overacting by the cast. The post-dubbing is terrible and makes the film seem more amateurish than it is. While the slow moving vampires serve the film thematically, they don't make for a very compelling menace. At no point does Morgan actually seem to be in danger...at least until the machine gun toting intelligent vampires show up. While Morgan's home is an interesting set, his pre-apocalypse workplace - a virology lab - is sparsely dressed, with only a microscope and a couple of beakers on a lab table. And, due to the lack of menace and action, the film does drag at spots, which can make its 86 minute run time seem to go on a bit longer.

The Last Man on Earth is a worthwhile adaptation of Matheson's book and a satisfying horror/sci-fi film. While not without flaws, the film is engaging. Price, who is on screen the entire film and who has to carry much of the narrative on his own, does a good job, playing Morgan in a way that at first seems stoical (and, therefore, in keeping with the tropes of the survival hero); it only becomes clear as the film progresses that Morgan is an emotionally shattered man going through the motions of life, not a square-jawed hero ready to rebuild the world. Some of the scenes and images are unsettling and have gone on to become standards of the survival horror genre.

For these reasons, The Last Man on Earth is a rewarding viewing experience.

Watch the full movie below.