The Last Man on Earth

Featured in The Schlocky Horror Picture Show S01E01.

https://trakt.tv/shows/the-schlocky-horror-picture-show/seasons/1/episodes/1

This is about as faithful to Richard Matheson's classic story "I Am Legend" as has ever been put to film. Vincent Price gives a great performance as the sole survivor (Dr. Robert Morgan) of a deadly plague that has wiped out every human on Earth except him. The thing that stands out about this movie is that it is filmed in black and white and looks rather low budget. However that does nothing but help the ravaged rundown mood of the film. The city streets reflect a barren wasteland now the property of the vampire/zombie leftovers of humanity. There is an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness that permeates everything. The scenes with Morgan's wife and daughter and their decents into the death that the disease brings is desperately sad and the fire pit where the bodies are burned is equally depressing. The ending almost goes the distance in that it certainly offers no hope but it doesn't quite match the book's finale which is a real shocker. This should not be overlooked by Price or Matheson fans. In fact for classic Horror fanatics it's a must see.

An aging Vincent Price takes the lead in this early interpretation of Richard Matheson's dystopian source material, recently mined by Will Smith in I Am Legend. It's a dark, troubling picture that's far more bleak and unflinching than its contemporaries. I don't consider the '60s to be a terribly fertile period for such eerie, subdued science fiction / horror mashups, but despite a few off-putting slips this holds up admirably.

Price is miscast in the lead, awkwardly overplaying the emotionless, hollow aspects of the central character, even in flashbacks where it's completely inappropriate. He feels out of place as a doting, caring father - often speaking around his daughter like she isn't even in the room - and that tears away some of the natural sympathy of his plight later in the picture.

The creatures that constantly plague him are effectively spooky, so long as they keep their mouths closed. A certain ambiance is lost when the shuffling human monster outside the barricaded window knows your name and encourages you to "c'mon out" in the wee hours of the morning. This was a lesson well-learned by George A. Romero, who's admitted the monsters' portrayal in this film directly influenced his beasts in the seminal Night of the Living Dead a few years later.

As an exercise in world-building, this is a broad success. It's tangible, vivid and realistic. The plot flails around absurdly at times, though, and the finale is a mish-mashed mess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A strong effort that falls puzzlingly short in a number of different ways, it's remarkable in several others.

I imagine for the time this was highly regarded and considered quite frightful, even the idea of it alone, with the prospect of being the last person on earth, would have easily scared anyone from this decade. But by today's standards, this unfortunately did not age well by any means. Not to the fault of Vincent Price, or what he had to work with, but rather the script is quite bare bones. Many many scenes with just the "undead" slowly beating at boards, cars, VP simply walking around town.

Points are mostly for setup of scenes, locations completely empty of people and setup quite well (something that would be impossible to accomplish today - another excellent example of this: The World, The Flesh, and the Devil)

Vincent Price is...The Last Man on Earth. When a plague wipes out humanity, turning them into the undead, only one man remains uninfected and dedicated to wiping out the disease. Unfortunately, the storytelling is rather poor and relies too much on voiceover. And, Vincent Price’s performance is a bit one-dimensional and overacted. Additionally, the nature of the creatures is confusing; they’re referred to as vampires, but really they’re more zombie-like. The Last Man on Earth is a little bland at times, but it presents some interesting ideas and is fairly entertaining.