Seres de las sombras

I never read Richard Matheson's novel 'I am Legend' but I'm particularly intrigued by (science fiction) movies with an apocalyptic theme. And this adaptation simply is one of the most fascinating stories of an already brilliant decade for this type of films. Much more than a grim horror film, this is a gripping drama with an excellent (as always) Vincent Price as the sole and devastated survivor of a deadly plague that exterminated the entire human race, including his own wife and daughter. Price is Dr. Robert Morgan and due to his immunity to the lethal germs, he's the only one to fight victims who return in the shape of vampire/zombie-like creatures. Even though it has already been 3 years, Morgan desperately continues his search for other survivors…This is one of the most impressive performances Price ever gave away, and a lot more difficult than his usual roles of villains and madmen. Judging by today's standards, I guess the film looks very dated and you can't really refer to the tame 'vamp-zombies' as threatening anymore. But the empty streets and depressing cities, shot in unsettling black and white, still are the ultimate in eeriness! I love it when a film makes you feel miserable and worried…and the lower the budget is, the more efficient this effect is reached!

Like several of my fellow-reviewers already pointed out, this also was an immensely influential film. You can't watch 'Last man on Earth' without being reminded of George A. Romero's milestone genre film 'Night of the Living Dead'. If you then realize this movie was made 4 years before Romero's classic, you can't but reckon the underrated brilliance of this film. The same hopelessness-aspect that made Romero's film so tense features HERE first, in 'Last Man on Earth'! This production offers an ideal proportion of frights and sentiments, luckily without too many tedious scientific speeches or faked drama. 'Last Man on Earth' has to be seen by every SF/horror fan on this planet. For some reason this is one of the most underrated genre efforts ever, and that urgently has to change.

The vincent price one! Black and white. The title says it all. It's him against the zombie people that keep coming and trying to get into his house. We hear his thoughts, as he goes shopping and plans out his defense against the intruders. This one isn't bad! Price had made so many cheesy, campy horror films in the 1950s and 1960s, where he played the organ and laughed at his own jokes. This one is played quite seriously. It's pretty good. Fifty five minutes in, he walks past a building that looks like a space ship, it's still a working restaurant in rome... ristorante il fungo, and has a web page. Directed by sidney salkow. He had directed a bunch of the lone wolf films with warren williaim, back in the 1940s. Based on the book by richard matheson. He had a bunch of his short stories and novels made into film.

Made four years before Night of the Living Dead, The Last Man on Earth tells a very similar story. Based on Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend", the film tells the tale of a terrible plague that has wiped out all of mankind and replaced them with vampire-zombie like creatures. Well, it's almost wiped mankind out - one man, Vincent Price, still remains. Now that he has inherited the Earth, the last surviving human has to hunt these creatures by day and then hole up in his house during the night. Vincent Price says most of dialogue in voice over, which gives this apocalyptic horror film a great element of pessimism, which is essential in order for the film to work. The way that Price reads his lines is done in such a way that it seems he has simply given up all hope, and this helps the tragic element of the movie, which is this film's main backbone. The dreary black and white cinematography helps this element of the film also, as it adds the degree of hopelessness and pessimism, which this story thrives on.

Quite how this film has reached the ripe old age of forty and still not garnered the praise and respect it deserves is beyond me. While Night of the Living Dead deserves the praise for 'really' creating the zombie movie that we all now know and love, this film got the theme first, and thus deserves it's place in the annals of film history. The story, even without the horror of the zombie creatures, still makes for fascinating food for thought. The idea of being left all alone on the Earth is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying, and by showing us the things that the protagonist has do every day to ward off the vampires (mirrors and garlic on the doors, hunting them by day), along with such quotes as "another day to live through" show the true horror of the idea behind the film. Of course, Vincent Price is one of the greatest actors of all time and his presence in the movie is easily one of the highlights. Price's great screen presence helps to offset the obvious low budget of the film and even during the slower moments, The Last Man on Earth still ensures that we are interested in what's going on, just by the fact that Price is there. On the whole, this is an extraordinarily brilliant film and one that deserves your viewing!

When a plague devastates life on Earth, the population dies or becomes a sort of zombie living in the dark. Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the unique healthy survivor on the planet, having a routine life for his own survival: he kills the night creatures along the day and maintains the safety of his house, to be protected along the night. He misses his beloved wife and daughter, consumed by the outbreak, and he fights against his loneliness to maintain mentally sane. When Dr. Morgan finds the contaminated Ruth Collins (Franca Bettoia), he learns that there are other survivors. He uses his blood to heal Ruth and he becomes the last hope on Earth to help the other contaminated survivors. But the order of this new society is scary.

"The Last Man on Earth" is a frightening and dark view of the fate of mankind. In those years, the preoccupation with radiation and biological weapons due to the cold war leaded people to this type of fear and preoccupation; later with AIDS; and presently with the disease in chickens. Fortunately science has developed means to cure or at least avoid epidemic situation, but we do not know how far we might be from such sad end of mankind. Vincent Price has a great performance in this movie, particularly in the beginning of the insanity of his character showed when he sees a photo of his family. The screenplay is very well developed, but the violent conclusion is weird. I always thought that George A. Romero was the creator of the "zombies", because of his excellent 1968 "Night of Living Dead". But now I can see that the origin of these creatures was in "The Last Man on Earth".

When I was a teenager, the remake "The Omega Man" was a very successful film in the movie theaters. I had not had the chance to see the original movie, since "The Last Man on Earth" (and "The Omega Man") had not been released on VHS or DVD in Brazil. Fortunately a minor Brazilian distributor has just released "The Last Man on Earth" on DVD, giving me the chance to see this great unknown movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Mortos Que Matam" (Dead That Kill")

Obs: On 25 May 2008, I watched this great classic movie again.

On 15 March 2014, I saw this movie again.

I'm not sure why this film is as underrated as it is. This is an amazing, depressing and in many ways brilliant film based on the Richard Matheson classic novel "I Am Legend". Vincent Price effectively conveys the terror and despair of being the last living man on an Earth that is now overrun with vampires and/or zombies. The depiction of Price's day to day bleak existence is a moving and powerful thing to behold and the continual menace of the hordes of zombies is creepy in the same way as was later depicted in "Night of the Living Dead". In fact, as noted by others here, one can not watch the scenes where the zombies lay siege to Price's boarded up house and attack his car without recognizing how close these scenes would later be copied by George Romero in his classic zombie films. If you are a fan of horror film history or just looking for a classic and unique film with an interesting story, track down this lost gem.