“Another day to live through. Better get started.”

Justin’s rating: Don’t you want to be a freak like me?

Justin’s review: When you step back to really consider it, Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend” was one of the most influential tales in cinema history. It directly inspired Night of the Living Dead, and together helped to birth the modern zombie genre with its hundreds upon hundreds of movies. It’s always kind of funny to me that the original source was ostensibly a twist on the vampire legend (although, to be fair, zombies and vampires are kissing cousins in the undead spectrum).

Out of the three attempts to adapt Matheson’s story, The Last Man on Earth is the most faithful to the source. I love the premise: One man is all that’s left after a plague’s either killed people or turned them into shambling vampires. Three years into this post-apocalyptic existence, he’s made both survival and vampire hunting his daily routine.

The legendary Vincent Price is Richard Morgan, a former chemical scientist who lost his wife and daughter to the early days of the plague. He’s since turned his house into a survival bunker with a generator, radio, garlic strings, mirrors, barriers, and wires criss-crossing everywhere. His world-weary narration gives us an insight into his routine, a routine which includes rounding up the dead vampires who were preyed upon by the stronger ones and then burning them.

His main task, however, is combing the city house-by-house for the main nest of vampires to stake. He does this during the day, for obvious reasons, returning to his shelter and boarding up for the regular night sieges that occur. I really liked seeing his daily activities and how the world greatly changed from night to day.

As he’s just one man — and nobody’s answering him on the radio these days — it’s hard to see why Morgan keeps on with this crusade. Even if he does kill every vampire in this city, there are still all the others. What’s this supposed to accomplish? What’s his endgame here? Maybe we all need hobbies when the world ends, I don’t know.

I almost don’t care about the answer, though, because the portrayal of a society post-plague is definitely creepy and well-thought out. There’s even a section where we get a flashback showing the early days of the plague and how it broke down families and mystified scientists. I actually wouldn’t have minded an entire film set in this time frame, because it’s got some of the same punch as, say, The Stand or Contagion.

While the look and world building for this older film is pretty impressive for its small budget, I was less thrilled to encounter the soundtrack. Music is one reason why I have a hard time going back to older films and TV shows, as a lot of it is bombastic and unrelenting. There’s no subtlety to it; it’s the orchestra trying to shove mood down my ear canals. So any scene where the music simmered down was one that I felt was more engrossing, not less.

The vamp-zombies of The Last Man on Earth deserve their own paragraph. They’re a little bit of both monster camps, initially slow, dull creatures who can barely talk or use tools — but they can, a bit. Morgan can easily fight off a small crowd of them (or shame them with mirrors), but their sheer numbers make nighttime excursions impossible. Hearing Morgan’s dead wife scrape at the door and hiss, “Let me in… let me in…” was easily one of the most haunting segments.

The clever twist of the book and the movie is that to these intelligent variants, Morgan is the boogeyman — the “legend” that’s hunting them down as they sleep. He becomes an ancient remnant of a dead civilization as a new one arises.

Don’t let its age, budget, or black-and-white format dissuade you from checking this out. The Last Man on Earth is an impressive feat of horror, scifi, and post-apocalyptic despair that’s a heck of a lot more faithful to the novel than Will Smith ever was.

Eunice’s rating: The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…

Eunice’s review: The first time I saw The Last Man on Earth, I was expecting a cheese-fest. A cheaply made Italian movie that hung on Vincent Price’s name, after he’d started his Roger Corman days, disowned by Matheson who was also a writer on the script, what would you think?

But I was wrong, and I’m glad for it.

A strange disease has wiped out humanity, leaving behind blood-drinking monsters that only look like people. Lone survivor Dr. Robert Morgan (Price) spends his days continuing to exist, driving through the abandoned cityscape for supplies, making weapons, and systematically killing the vampires/zombies building by building, block by block. The nights find him holed up in his house, barricaded against the howling clawing mobs, drowning in jazz, booze, and dark memories. After three years, he continues to try to find a cure and use his CB radio to look for other survivors more out of habit than hope.

Based on the classic story I Am Legend, this is probably the closest adaptation to Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic horror story, especially in tone. The main character goes through his routines grinding out an existence. A constantly burning pit of bodies puts off greasy smoke. When the character finds companionship, it blows up in his face. It’s almost 90 minutes of bleakness.

Price’s haggard dark Morgan is worth the watch. His velvety voice, seasoned with weary bitterness, is perfect for the long stretches of narration that are over a good chunk of the movie. He is the movie’s strength.

There are, however, problems. It is really cheaply made, and the ‘60s Italian factor means there’s bad, sometimes very bad, dubbing. Parts can be slow. If narration bothers you, well it has a lot of it.

But it has stuck with me a lot longer than the remakes, or even most other “undead” flicks. While it has vampire trappings, it’s the first of the modern zombie movies, and takes a turn towards scifi at the end. Not to mention a total must-see for Vincent Price fans.

Intermission!

• People just dropping everywhere in this post-apocalyptic world
• Three years and he’s made a whole lot of calendars
• That garage generator is a massive fire hazard
• “More of them for the pit. Every day, more of them.”
• A stake-making machine!
• Maybe close your garage door as you leave?
• That’s a remarkably tidy and bug-free supermarket — with its own generator!
• The staking montage
• Morgan’s breakdown as he watches the old home movie
• “You take care of your life, and I’ll take care of mine.”
• The burning pit is haunting
• “Let me in… let me in…”
• Doggie! Come back!
• Why do you turn away from the crazy guy waving garlic right in your face?
• That’s a nice zombie front-flip off the top of a house