The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Directed by Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow

Film Review

The first screen version of Richard Matheson's classic sci-fi novel I Am Legend is an effective rendering of a modern vampire tale but its impact is greatly diminished by some poor design and weak direction that fail to disguise its lamentably low budget.  To save on cost, the film was shot in Rome with a predominantly Italian cast and crew and badly dubbed into English.  Although Vincent Price turns in a surprisingly good performance (cast against type in a sympathetic and heroic role) the actor is visibly miscast and struggles to convey the abject desolation of someone who realises he is, literally, the last man on Earth.  Price may be miscast but his star presence is badly needed as the rest of the cast is made up of largely unknown Italian actors who look as if they are doomed to spend their entire careers in B-movie schlock such as this.

Like its subsequent, more expensive remake The Omega Man (1971), the film is most impressive in its opening third.  Some stark and chilling visuals provide a powerful testimony of a society that has abruptly collapsed, and the nocturnal sequences in which the zombie-like vampires attack the hero's home have a nightmarish, almost iconic quality, which director George A. Romero would later appropriate for his landmark zombie film, Night of the Living Dead (1968).  Things go badly awry with an extended flashback that makes up the film's middle portion, a descent into tedious melodrama that pointlessly holds things up.  Things do not improve when the narrative returns to the present and a slightly botched denouement ends up massively short-changing Matheson's sophisticated horror story.  Vincent Price's presence ensured that The Last Man on Earth would not be forgotten but, poorly written and ineptly packaged, it is a mere shadow of what it might have been.  No wonder Matheson was quick to disown it.

Film Synopsis

In 1968, Robert Morgan is the last human being left on Earth.  Three years ago, humanity began to succumb to a plague that transformed people into zombie-like vampires.  Morgan lost his wife and his daughter to this mysterious and incurable illness and now ekes out a wretched existence in a hostile world.  By day, he roams the city, disposing of any vampires he comes across.  By night, he barricades himself in his house as the walking dead come hammering on his door, intent on killing him.  One day, Robert encounters a woman named Ruth who appears not to have been touched by the plague.  He soon discovers that she is a mutant, one of a small band of survivors who have developed a vaccine to keep the disease at bay.  Amongst Ruth's people Robert is a legend, one that is too dangerous to go on living...