With all the recent hubbub about the trailer for the WORLD WAR Z movie (see Scott's article here), and the negative Internet reaction to how much it seems to differ from Max Brook's popular novel, I am reminded of a long-standing argument about such differences with another book, and its treatment over the years.

Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND was an innovative, genre-redefining masterpiece, a book which renewed interest in the post-apocalyptic genre. Written in 1954 in the early days of Matheson's prolific career, the book depicts Robert Neville, an ordinary man who somehow becomes the sole survivor of a pandemic whose victims are left with symptoms highly resembling vampirism: they are comatose during the day, coming out at night with a psychopathic thirsty for blood. His blood. He spends his days securing his Los Angeles house with garlic, crucifixes and mirrors, and hunting down the vampires, especially his old friend Ben Cortman, staking them and throwing their bodies into an eternally-burning pit outside of the city.

Funny, Vincent Price is usually running from torch-bearing mobs...

His nights, meanwhile, are spent within his suburban fortress, ignoring the cries of the vampires outside, "Come out Neville!", and alternating between trying to comprehend the disease and fighting his alcohol-fuelled depression - and his memories of his wife and daughter, lost to the plague as the world fell apart while he remained normal. Gradually he formulates a scientific basis for the disease, including the idea that its victims' mental state, made worse by the panic following the fall of civilisation, is so affected that they believe they're the vampires of supernatural origin, to the point that they develop phobias for the traditional tropes such as crosses and garlic. He also discovers other survivors, people with the disease but able to control it and maintain their intellects. They're rebuilding society - but Neville has no part in it...

Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND book cover

I AM LEGEND was not initially well-received by critics at the time, but has gradually built up an appreciation with both critics and readers; in 2012, the Horror Writers Association gave I AM LEGEND the special Vampire Novel of the Century Award. Although the idea has now become commonplace, a scientific origin for vampirism or zombies was fairly original when written. Its influence really cannot be underestimated. Director George A. Romero, who acknowledged its influence upon his seminal film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). Stephen King has said, "Books like I AM LEGEND were an inspiration to me", and that he would never have taken up his pen to pursue a writing career if not for Matheson.

There have been three film versions of the book, the most recent being the 2007 treatment starring Will Smith. Back in the 70s there was a pretty good version entitled THE OMEGA MAN, which was part of Charlton Heston's sci-fi era and which had a pronounced effect on me as a boy. There was almost a fourth version which would have been done by Hammer Films in 1957, using a script penned by Matheson himself and entitled NIGHT CREATURES, but the project was abandoned after the British censors read the script and basically prolapsed.

The Last Man on Earth is Armed!!

So the first adaptation ended up being the 1964 Italian film THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, aka L'ULTIMO UOMO DELLA TERRA, starring Vincent Price in the title role.

The movie opens with numerous shots of a dead city, with bodies lying haphazardly in the roads, on steps, in houses. One shot of a church has one of those 'End of the World is Nigh' signs (and I'll bet there were more than a few smug doomsayers towards the end). We then close in one barricaded house, and its sole occupant, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price). He awakens at the crack of dawn, ironically zombie-like in his movements, eating more for survival than pleasure, marking off a calendar hand drawn on one wall to indicate years have passed since the last printed ones had expired, and makes another futile attempt to contact others on his shortwave radio. He fashions pointed wooden sticks on a rudimentary lathe (a No-Prize to anyone who gets the source of the phrase "rudimentary lathe") and checks the garlic, crosses and mirrors he hangs outside his house. Surrounding his residence are bodies; in one of his many expositional voiceovers, Morgan tells us "they feed on the weaker ones", and he loads the bodies into his station wagon for eventual disposal in a burning pit beyond the city. Occasionally he selects a street from a map and 'cleanses' it of the afflicted, but he's just one man, and it's a big town full of vampires. Sometimes he'll stop at a supermarket for supplies, or visit his wife's crypt and fall asleep crying about her – only to wake up after dark, and have to fight his way back to his home.

Maybe not the best make-up, but WAY better than Will Smith's I AM LEGEND version with all the CGI crap!!

In a flashback, we learn that before the End, Morgan and his best friend Ben Cortman (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE) were lab technicians working on a cure for a plague running rampant through Europe and threatening to spread to the rest of the world; those who die are taken away for burning. Morgan tries to keep the horrible truth from his wife Virginia (Emma Danielli) and his young daughter Kathy (Christi Courtland). But soon the truth comes home, literally, as Kathy contracts the disease and dies while Morgan is away, and he rushes out in vain to stop her being disposed of like trash. "Can't you understand?" he pleads with the soldiers. "That's my daughter!" "That pit's full of daughters," one soldier replies, "Including my own!" Still Morgan tries to find a cure, though no one bothers showing up at the labs, including Ben Cortman, who is convinced there is something to the supernatural aspects of the plague. Eventually, Virginia succumbs and dies as well, though Morgan spares her the pit and buries her in an isolated field. He shouldn't have bothered; that evening, she returns to the house...

Back in the present, Morgan's routine is disrupted by an encounter with a small dog seemingly unaffected by the plague, and by the discovery of vampires killed, not by his wooden stakes, but by iron spikes he did not fashion! He eventually captures the dog, but learns to his despair that it too is infected and needs to be killed (we see him bury a small sack with a stake driven through it). As for the latter, he encounters a woman, Ruth (Franca Bettoia), out in the open and seemingly rational. But when he takes her backs and interrogates and examines her, he eventually learns that she is infected, but somehow able to control the debilitating effects of the plague with a serum.

Sorry, the auditions for the Thriller video closed 30 years ago...

It turns out Ruth is not alone, there is a whole underground of other survivors like herself (she had let herself be taken by him in order to see what knowledge he held about the plague). They are the ones who killed the other vampires he found, the ones too far gone for the serum, and are creating a new society, but as the last member of the previous race, he has no part in it – especially as Morgan has inadvertently been killing them along with the feral vampires. They have become the Norm, and he is the Monster that has to be hunted down and disposed of...

Who the hell ya talking to, Vinnie? You're THE LAST MAN ON EARTH!!

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH has often been decried as an inferior movie (Richard Matheson, having written the original screenplay, was apparently so dissatisfied with it that he used his pen name Logan Swanson). But watching it now, I feel it deserves a reappraisal. Directed by Sidney Salkow (who among numerous films also directed many episodes of the original ADDAMS FAMILY TV series), the stark black and white cinematography enhances the atmosphere of isolation and despair, and there was no attempt to alter the story to enliven the doom hanging over the world. Vincent Price puts in a surprisingly intense and subdued performance, especially considering he has such a reputation for being over the top and hammy. He would not have been my first choice for the role, but he carries the bitter, sardonic character perfectly (I remember watching one scene as a boy, where Morgan is watching home movies and circus scenes, starts laughing at some clowns, and then breaks down crying, and it struck me as being the first time I ever saw a man cry. Which probably says as much about my childhood as about Price's performance).

They're coming to get you, Vincent...

It's not without its faults, chief among them being the relatively ineffectual threat of the vampires. In the book, they are semi-intelligent, strong, even cunning (there are passages where female vampires do a Britney to Neville in order to entice him out of his house – and I can imagine a few guys risking death to tap some of that after so long without). In this movie, they are few, and weak, Morgan able to easily push them aside, and they act more like zombies than vampires. Even the barricades on Morgan's windows appear incomplete and flimsy, but are apparently still capable to keeping them out. There's also a limited attempt to make the setting look like an American city rather than Rome, but it still feels wrong.

Still, where it might falter in places, it more than makes up for with a decent performance from Price, atmospheric cinematography, and a relatively faithful allegiance to the spirit of the original story. The film has lapsed into the public domain, and is available from numerous sources. Catch the trailer below!!

Deggsy's Summary:

Director: Sidney Salkow

Plot: 4 out of 5 stars

Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem: 4 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Derek "Deggsy" O'Brien