Fri 10 Aug 2012
An Archived Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[5] Comments
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. American-International Pictures, 1964. Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Umberto Rau, Christi Courtland. Screenplay: William F. Leicester & Richard Matheson (as Logan Swanson), based on the latter’s novel, I Am Legend. Directors: Ubaldo B. Ragona & Sidney Salkow.
Speaking of Sublime Cheapies, The Last Man on Earth was on the other night, the first time it’s been aired around here — cable or otherwise — for almost twenty years.
It was worth waiting for. This film has real seat-of-the-pants tawdriness: a ragged, amateurish improvisational feel that is totally appropriate to the subject. As I watched the over/under-lighted camera-work, listened to the grainy soundtrack, and had my wits challenged by the jagged editing, I had the same eerie feeling I had two decades ago, that this film could have been made by, not about, the last surviving human.
Needless to say, TLMOE is light years beyond its big-budget remake, The Omega Man, of seven years later.
In the latter film, we got heroic Charlton Heston living in sybaritic isolation amid mad horde of counterculture late-60s stereotypes, treating the theme with a banality all its own. The picture in The Last Man on Earth is of the ultimate Civilized Man, cooped up in the suburbs, getting by with a jerry-rigged generator and clunky old cars as he copes as best he can with the ultimate in Unreason: Crowds of his former neighbors now turned into zombies.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51739690186335997
The Last Man on Earth also has the distinction of being the most poignant Monster Movie I’ve ever seen.
In a movie this ragged, the few moments spared for Feeling take on a surprising importance: the torment of parents trying to ignore the cries of a sick child because they’re afraid to call a doctor; Vincent Price crying as he watches old Home Movies; and best of all, his pathetic joy at attracting a mangy, dying dog — all carry an emotional impact one rarely gets from even decently-made films, much less hand-to-mouth cheapies like this one.
I should add that my esteem for this film is to General Critical Consensus as Perversion is to Love. For the last quarter-century, responsible reviewers have dismissed The Last Man on Earth as a cheap, miscast travesty of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Perhaps, years from now, Fashion will catch up with it. But I doubt it.
Editorial Comment: It’s now 20 years after Dan first wrote this review. No longer do you have to wait for the movie to be shown on TV. You can watch it in its entirety on your computer screen whenever you wish. (See above.)
What’s the critical opinion today? The Last Man on Earth currently has a 6.9 rating out of 10 on IMDB, and there are links to 100 external reviews. Has that last doubt of Dan’s been proven wrong?
August 10th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
As I may have said back in 1991, I read about this movie in some SF magazine (either Imagination or Imaginative Tales) in the 1950s and wanted desperately to see it. It never came to my small hometown’s only theater, and if it showed up on TV, I didn’t know it. Then around 1970 I happened to see it listed on some channel around 2:00 AM. No VCR, of course, in those days, but I stayed up and watched it. Now I own the DVD.
August 10th, 2012 at 11:19 pm
LAST MAN ON EARTH is a good and worthy film, but I was sorry to see THE OMEGA MAN get bad-mouthed. The “mad horde of counter-culture late-60’s stereotypes” help make it a strange and fascinating period piece. Not to mention the wish fulfillment of driving around in various muscle cars while slaughtering mutants with a Swedish submachine gun, or that wildly overblown last scene of Heston as Jesus, dying in the fountain. Watching it repeatedly on tv and VHS as a child, it almost seemed more like a waking dream to me than a movie.
(Of course, the Matheson novel is better than any of the adaptions.)
August 11th, 2012 at 12:09 am
Word has it that Matheson took his name off the credits of LAST MAN ON EARTH (or used the pseudonym he did), he thought it so poorly done.
But I’ve been looking into it, and it really seems that LAST MAN has become quite a cult film, all probably in the time after Dan wrote his review.
It turns out I have the movie on DVD, too, Bill, and I didn’t even know it. It’s one of a “Midnite Movies” set of four I picked up somewhere for a couple of dollars. But unlike you, I never knew anything about the Matheson connection, until now, and I never was on the lookout for it.
I have never seen THE OMEGA MAN, and while Dan’s comment didn’t encourage me in that regard, Dozy, it looks like I have you to thank for making me think twice. (Good to hear from you again!)
August 11th, 2012 at 3:39 am
LAST MAN ON EARTH is a terrific film, and a pretty obvious influence on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (the scenes where the vampires try to break into Neville’s home could have been slipped in NOTLD without anyone noticing). Price gives a strong performance, and possibly his least ‘Price’ portrayal. Viewing stuff like this, WITCHFINDER GENERAL and a number of his less well know films, you get an impression of just what a versatile actor he was. The scene where he views home movies on a little projector is particularly memorable for me, as I first saw the movie on a 16mm print that a friend showed on the projector at our home. It gave it a strange resonance, which I still feel whenever I view the movie now.
Think thrice about THE OMEGA MAN. It’s great fun. It’s undoubtedly a movie of its time (Heston’s character relaxes by going to a deserted movie theatre to watch WOODSTOCK ‘They don’t make movies like this anymore!’ he says sadly), but it’s dated in a way that is part of the fun.
August 11th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Thank you Steve, good to be back.
Dan didn’t mention it, but LAST MAN ON EARTH was filmed in Italy, which to my very American eyes gives the film a certain off-kilter look that makes it that much more interesting. And, as befitting a movie with a heavy Italian influence, the black outfits worn by the villains at the end were attractively chic in a fascist sort of way.
Matheson also disowned THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN for years, until the film’s many admirers convinced him that it was, in fact, a well-crafted piece of 50’s cinema. Or so the story goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he now thinks a bit more favorably of LAST MAN ON EARTH.