Je suis une légende

"The Last Man on Earth" is an English language, Italian production of Richard Matheson's classic horror tale "I Am Legend", starring the great Vincent Price in the titular role.

This story was also done with Charlton Heston as "The Omega Man", and "I Am Legend" with Will Smith.

This is probably the best filmed version of this story I have seen. The black and white photography is fantastic, as is the direction, which really makes you believe you are witnessing a post-apocalyptic scenario. Above all, Vincent Price is surprisingly well cast as the titular last man, haggard, face drawn, less an action hero than a scientist trying to solve the problem of apocalypse.

The creatures in the movie are apparently vampires - they cannot go out in the day time, and they must be "staked" - yet they behave much more like the kind of zombies that George Romero would change the horror landscape with a few years later. I wonder if he was inspired by this film.

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.

My goodness, this movie holds up well. First watched it some 5 years ago, watched it again tonight, and I am beginning to realize how influential it is. As observed by many other posters, many films/directors are in debt to this movie. The list would begin but not end with "Night of the Living Dead", "Omega Man", "28 Days Later", and "Day of the Dead". There is also that very good Australian (?) movie, "This Silent Earth." That is to only mention the good movies. Countless crappy movies also owe their profits to this woefully unknown gem. Sure, as a Vincent Price fan I am biased. But the quality of this movie - from the script to the photography to Price's glorious intonations - is hard to deny.

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!

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.