Last Man on Earth, The (1964)

• Directed by Ubaldo B. Ragona and Sidney Salkow
• Written by William F. Leicester, “Logan Swanson” (Richard Matheson), Furio M. Monetti, and Ubaldo B. Ragona, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• Starring
  • Vincent Price
  • Franca Bettoia
  • Emma Danieli
  • Giacomo Rossi-Stuart
  • Umberto Rau
• Produced by Robert L. Lippert
• Executive produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff

Richard Matheson, author of the novel I Am Legend on which this movie is based, felt that Vincent Price was miscast in the lead role of Robert Morgan. (He was also dissatisfied with the final screenplay on which he had collaborated, and thus replaced his name with “Logan Swanson.”) I can appreciate his qualms. Price could never not be genteel, no matter the role, and the scientist version of Morgan he portrays here is very different from the self-educated layman that Morgan is in the novel.

But the part of the last man on Earth – the sole survivor of a vampire apocalypse, barricading himself in at night and doggedly hunting vampires during the day – is one that demands a tremendous screen presence from the lead actor; the actor really is the movie. It’s like a one-man stage play in which the performer can never address the audience. (Voiceovers help, but never as much as they’re supposed to.) So even if Price didn’t match the character of Morgan in the novel, he was a performer with the quiet, morose charisma necessary to carry a movie that isn’t just about him, it’s largely only him. As with the two other films directly based on or inspired by Matheson’s novel in the following decades, the producers were wise to pick a captivating performer for the role, even if that performer’s demeanor clashed with the novel’s protagonist’s character. (Just consider how much this movie would have suffered if, say, Ray Milland, who acted in several movies that were originally offered to Price, had taken on the role of Robert Morgan. No. Just no.)

“I’m glad you’re hear with me for smooth oldies through the night…”

As I mentioned, the movie opens with Morgan, alone, three years after the world went somewhere in a handbasket in 1965. At night, he huddles in his barricaded suburban tract home as a horde of vampires – including his former neighbor/co-worker/best friend Ben Cortman (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) – beats on the boarded windows and doors and calls for him to come out. During the day, the hunted becomes the hunter: after turning the day’s ration of wooden stakes on his lathe, he methodically drives through down, finding and staking sleeping vampires and checking off the city blocks on his map. This is Vincent Price, so of course even three years after society’s collapse his hair is trim and his moustache is immaculate; the only difference between the pre-armageddon Morgan seen in flashbacks and the post-armageddon Morgan is that the latter wears no necktie with his white shirt and blazer.

Surrounding one’s self with garlic 24/7 can take its toll on a guy.

Said flashbacks backtrack for context: Morgan was a scientist, working with Cortman and other researchers on a worldwide plague which had started in Europe and been carried, airborne, to America. The government was very intent on transporting the corpses of the infected to the huge firepit outside of town; Morgan trusts the official party line, that incineration is the best way to keep the contagion from spreading (though and uncovered firepit doesn’t seem like the best method of control for an airborne contagion to me); Ben, though, has heard that the real reason is that the dead return as vampires. As with any scientist who scoffs at wild stories in the movies, Morgan has ample time later to discover his error when first his daughter, then his wife come down with the plague.

“For the last time, I don’t want a Book of Mormon!”

In the novel, Morgan is an intelligent non-scientist who starts his own research into vampirism to keep himself sane in the days of solitude; the change was made for the movie, obviously, because someone raiding abandoned libraries and reading does not make for gripping cinema. Unfortunately, this change means that the movie can’t reproduce one of the major innovations which the book added to the vampire canon, that of explaining the vampirism in epidemiological rather than supernatural terms: the vampire contagion being spread by a bacillus, the need for blood in order to feed the infection, the aversion to garlic for chemical reasons and the aversion to mirrors because of the psychological trauma of seeing themselves changed… Although spoken of as vampires, the undead in the movie are never shown drinking blood and have normal-sized canines; rather than being super-strong and agile, they are clumsy shamblers with sunken cheeks and darkened eyesockets. One doesn’t need George Romero’s public confirmations to know that The Last Man on Earth provided the inspiration for the zombies in Night of the Living Dead.

If something scares Vincent Price this much, you might as well just pee your pants.

The Last Man on Earth isn’t a great movie; in fact, I would be surprised if it had been. The script was originally developed for Hammer Films, which leads one to speculate if Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee would have played the lead in an alternate universe. After Hammer passed, the script was picked up by producer Robert Lippert, a film professional who made his career cranking out cheap, forgettable programmers to fill the lower half of double bills; his name should be familiar to longtime readers, as I’ve covered other films he produced here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (and I may have missed one or two).

Lippert’s Rome-based production, which featured Price as the lone American actor among an otherwise dubbed Italian cast, had all the resources necessary for the adaptation of this minor classic novel; unfortunately, the movie is brought down by workmanlike direction and uneven pacing. Part of this, as mentioned, comes from the changes to the screenplay necessitated by the translation to film; another part comes directly from the novel (I’m of the opinion that the twist at the end of I Am Legend which gives the book its title is too sudden and not as satisfying as it could be). But even with those handicaps stipulated, too much of the emotional potential of the story material is passed over instead of exploited. Morgan’s discovery and adoption of a stray dog, for example, is one of the emotional high points of the novel; here, it’s dealt with so quickly that one wonders why it was included.

“Wait! Come back! Seriously, I just want to show you my etchings!”

Still, it’s always worth it to see Price take center stage and demonstrate that he was good for much more than hammy mugging. I don’t think any other actor has been able to make a cliched “laughter turn to tears” scene seem so genuine. If you know what this movie is going into it – a captivating performance from Price, a problematic script based on a minor classic novel, and bare adequacy for all the rest – you’ll be satisfied watching it.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 29, plus 1 dog
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 5
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0