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.

Short Attention Span Review - Horror Express (1972) - With Non-Stop Service To Spoilers

Horror Express is a tasty sci-fi/horror stew. Set on the Trans-Siberian Railway a few years before the Russian Revolution, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing star as scientists battling a lethal visitor from space. A frozen prehistoric corpse unearthed by Lee holds within it the life force of an extraterrestrial, left here eons ago by his inattentive fellow aliens. While these elements lend the film it's science fiction flavor, the movie owes much of it's look and story elements to gothic horror (particularly of the Hammer Films variety).

The setting is pure 19th Century gothic, with the cramped train interiors and baroque decorations a suitable stand in for crumbling castles and dark crypts. Alberto de Mendoza's Father Pujardov, a Rasputin-like mad monk, would be equally at home standing in a ghost-haunted cemetery. The monster kills by draining it's victims of life and memories by making eye contact, can leap from body to body and even raise some it's victims from the dead, powers more in keeping with some ghoulish supernatural entity.

The forces of authority are pretty much useless, standard for films of this genre. Julio Pena's Inspector Mirov is mostly interested in not "panicking" the passengers, the refrain of every cop or government official in every horror movie. When Telly Savalas and his band of trigger-happy troops show up, they mainly serve as cannon fodder and, later, a pack of shuffling zombies.

Science, however, comes to the rescue, with Lee and Cushing tag-teaming their way to defeating the menace (well, with the aid of a long drop and and a big explosion; it's action-science!). Of course, the science in question is very 19th Century. Knowledge is "engraved" on the human brain, so, when the alien performs a knowledge suck, the brain becomes smooth. Memory is stored in the fluid of the eyes. When the alien leaps from the ape-man to Inspector Mirov, he somehow sprouts a hairy, Neanderthal hand. You know....Science!

The film does have some effective chills and some interesting plot points. The ape-man costume looks pretty good (aided by the fact that it's kept in shadow) and the attacks are well done. The confined spaces of the train and the frequent use of close-ups and tight shots create a suitably claustrophobic feeling. The lead actors all do a fine job with their roles, particularly Lee and Cushing, who make believable men of action AND intellect. Mendoza has a lot of fun with the Pujardov character. He's so intense and greasy the screen almost sweats when he's spouting off about the alien being Satan or, later, groveling at the creature's feet. And it is refreshing that the goal of the alien is not conquest or destruction; it just wants to rejoin it's fellow brain suckers in space, even if that means advancing human civilization.

Is it a great movie? No. Many of the effects are pretty bad. The musical score is too bombastic for the events of the film. The alien's powers are driven more by the needs of the plot than any sense of consistency. The ending - where Moscow orders the train to be destroyed - makes no sense, since there's no indication that anything is wrong, other than a couple of murders. However, for a fun and genuinely creepy 90 minutes, get your ticket and take a ride on the Horror Express.

Check out the full movie below.

New [Rec] On The Way - Some Spoliers Below

[Rec] and [Rec2] were masterful horror films. Well paced and acted, they demonstrated what could be done with a limited environment (an apartment building), as well as how to make an effective "found footage" style film. [Rec3] was uneven, going for slapstick humor in stark contrast to the unrelenting horror of the first two films. The director of the first two films - Jaume Balagueró - as well as the star, the ubercute Manuela Velasco - is back for [Rec4]. If the trailer (below) is any indication, the new film will return to the tone of the original, being a balls to the wall horror movie.

For those of you who have not seen these movies they are a twist on the zombie genre. The back-story involves an experiment by the Catholic Church to find a biological cause for demonic possession. The priest assigned to the task does so, finding a virus that causes the victims to become homicidal - and hard to kill - monsters, like the "fast" cinematic zombies from the Dawn of the Dead remake or 28 Days Later. Unfortunately, in finding the virus, the priest either makes it more virulent or it mutates. Either way, it infects the inhabitants of an apartment building in Barcelona. The authorities seal the building off, trapping a dwindling number of survivors, including a couple of firemen and a news crew that was following them around, led by a reporter played by Velasco. The second film starts immediately after the first film ends, following a tactical team and a group of teenagers who both enter the building. The virus from the first film displays some supernatural qualities when a sample of contaminated blood bursts into flames when a religious rite is performed on it. [Rec2] ends with Velasco's character the sole survivor and possessed by a demon.

It looks like [Rec 4} is going to ignore the third film and start with the aftermath of [Rec 2]. According to the director, it will also drop the found footage aspect, which is a good thing. The first two films had used it to good effect, but with the glut of found footage films on the market, it really isn't that fresh a look.

See, Manuela Velasco...ubercute...

31 Days of Halloween (Day 8) - Vampires

I hear it now, "another John Carpenter movie?" Well, stop your whining; there will be a couple of other ones before this thing is over. Carpenter makes great horror and science fiction movies. Well, at least he did up until In The Mouth of Madness. At that point, his output became more uneven. One of those uneven films is Vampires, based on the John Steakly book Vampire$, which I enjoyed and recommend.

Carpenter's Vampires is a good example of the parts being greater than the whole. The movie has some very nice scenes, images, ideas and acting, starting with the first ten minutes. James Woods plays Jack Crow, leader of a team of vampire hunters, supported by the Catholic Church. The movie opens on a sun blasted southwestern plain, with the team approaching a dilapidated ranch house. They have located a nest of vampires ("goons" as they call the less powerful creation of "master" vampires) and are going to exterminate it. These first ten minutes see Carpenter at the top of his game. Carpenter conveys a sense of professionalism through the use of specialized equipment (chainmail neck guards, metal pikes, highly polished and functional looking steaks), the look of the team (scruffy, but tough), the direction of the action (the team seems to function as one, using various tactics that look like the product of years of fighting the undead) and Woods scenery chewing, but effective, take on the team leader, complete with a list of "rules" for vampire hunting. In short, in this ten minutes you get the sense of what a team of vampire hunters would actually be like, if vampires existed.

Jack Crow and company ready to kick some undead ass.

Some of the acting is good as well. Although Woods plays his profane, violent, misogynistic, fanatical vampire hunter in the most bombastic, hyper-macho mode possible, it works in terms of the film. You would have to be an ultimate badass to survive fighting against monsters that are stronger and faster than humans and almost indestructible. And Woods has a screen presence, something some of his co-stars lack. Time Guinee, playing Father Adam Guiteau also does a good job as the newest member of the team, assigned to Crow after his last priest (and most of his team) is killed.

They should have stayed at a Motel 6.

Carpenter also comes up with some arresting images. In particular, a scene of a group of vampires rising out of the desert floor at sundown is creepy and memorable. In addition, as is usual with Carpenter's movies, the soundtrack enhances the film, the southwestern/electric theme playing into the film's modern western feel.

Unfortunately, there are significant problems. Daniel Baldwin, playing Anthony Montoya, Crow's right-hand man is terrible, with two emotional states - screaming and sleepy. Sheryl Lee, playing Katrina, a hooker who is bitten by the chief vampire and sharing a telepathic link to him, is fun to look at, but seemingly bored with the role. Thomas Ian Griffith, playing Valek, the protagonist and, apparently, the source of all vampires, has no personality. In spite of Carpenter trying to create a new more "realistic" type of vampire - at one point Crow tells Guiteau they aren't "hopping around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody with cheesy Euro-trash accents" - what we get instead are Goth looking people who mostly growl.

Sheryl Lee giving us her best "come hither" look.

The story has some serious problems, particularly how Valek (and all vampires) were created created by an "inverse exorcism" and how his master plan is to complete it so he can walk in the daylight. Um, okay...but,if the exorcism was to drive out evil (and something went wrong) why would completing it make him more pwoerful? And, while some of the set-pieces work well, others do not. Much of the second act in a motel room having to watch Baldwin and Lee try to emote which is, frankly, dull. and, there is a nasty streak of misogyny with both Crow and Montoya. I guess it was to make the characters as old-school, un-PC as possible. What it does is make them seem like dicks. And, finally, there are some pretty clunky lines...or, at least,they are poorly delivered.

It is unfortunate that Carpenter took a great premise - a professional vampire hunting team - and didn't go anywhere with it. Instead we get another one of his riffs on Westerns (in this case, Rio Bravo) with horror trappings. Still there are enough fun bits that I don't ever mind watching the film; I just see what could have been, something that could've made the movie a classic instead of just okay.

31 Days of Halloween (Day 7) - House (1986)

House is a horror film from the mid-80s, one that I remember seeing on cable years ago. Thanks to Netflix, I can indulge in all my nostalgic movie impulses, including one in which William Katt fights an undead, pissed-off Richard Moll in a Vietnam War zombie suit.

Really.

Katt plays a successful horror novelist who is also a Vietnam vet. Before the movie begins, his son mysteriously disappears from his aunt’s house, leading to a divorce from his wife, the very attractive Kay Lenz. A short time later his aunt commits suicide and Katt returns to the house to work on his latest book, an autobiography of his time in Vietnam. He soon finds that the house is a portal to a spectral realm full of ghost, goblins...and a very angry Moll.

Isn't this how all authors dress when writing? I know I do.

House is not a particularly scary movie. It is generally billed as a horror comedy and there are some funny bits, although the movie is not a parody a la the Scary Movie series. My favorite humorous bit involves a hot neighbor (Mary Stavin) who at first seems to be coming on to Katt. Later, it turns out she was sizing him up...as babysitter material. She deposits her son with him while she heads off on a date. And, of course, the ghosts try to snag the little rug-rat.

Kay Lenz orders a pizza...or something.

The film is light-hearted as far as horror movies go. The creature designs are imaginative, but not particularly frightening. There are a couple of jump scares and some bloodless dismemberments (these are ghosts after all). The spirit realm is basically a jungle set, including Viet Cong. This makes sense since it appears this little slice of the afterlife gets its form from Richard Moll's Vietnam zombie ghost. Moll, who seems to be orchestrating things and commanding the other creatures, is after Katt. During the war, he was severely injured in an attack. Katt found him, left him to get help and while he was gone, the VC captured Moll and tortured him to death. Moll blames Katt for not killing him quickly...but not the VC who actually killed him? Well, no one said ghosts have to behave rationally.

Richard Moll preparing for his Night Court reunion show.

In the end, Katt rescues his son - who was sucked into a portal to the ghost world in the pool, overcomes his fear of Moll (and, by extension, the trauma of the war) and blows him up. Moll...not his son. Lenz shows up just in time to see Katt and son emerge from the burning house. Smiles all around. The end.

So, what do I like about it? It’s just a FUN movie. Although it starts a little slow, midway through the second act the action picks up and doesn’t stop. The effects are rubbery, but look neat and fit the sense of an alien reality bleeding into ours. The spirit world is minimal - a dark jungle set - but given that it is a reflection of Moll’s evil spirit and represents a part of Katt’s life that he never got over, it works. And the movie is pretty funny. And, yes, there is nostalgia at work. I was a kid when I first saw the movie. Like other films from that time - e.g., Fright Night, Hellraiser, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 - seeing them does take me back to those days. And, that is part of the appeal of Halloween for an adult. The chance to indulge in a child’s sense of wonder and terror.

If Mary Stavin showed up looking like this, asking for baby sitting services even I would say yes.

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