The Last Man on Earth – review

Directed by: Ubaldo Ragona

Release Date: 1964

Contains spoilers

Originally planned to be a Hammer production, which was eventually rejected because the censor office threatened to ban the film in Britain if Hammer made it, this Italian movie is the only film so far that has got close to capturing Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend, though it did significantly veer from the original book in places. Just to note, also, that my DVD print of this is not exactly the best in the world, so I apologise now for the screenshots.

The film stars Vincent Price as Dr Robert Morgan, the last man of the title. We start with scenes of a desolate city, occasional corpses upon the streets. In a house an alarm clock sounds and Morgan awakens. “Another day to live through,” Vincent Price’s marvellous voice intones, “I’d better get started.”

His daily routine, which has lasted three years, involves checking his generator, and then checking the mirrors, crosses and garlic that he has on his external doors. There are corpses outside his home; we discover that ‘they’ feed upon the weaker of their own kind. The mirror on his door is smashed as their own reflection repels them and his garlic, which the infected are allergic to, is becoming stale. He checks his ham radio, to no avail, and then makes stakes upon a lathe before venturing out.

In the city he gets petrol from an abandoned tanker and then takes the bodies from outside his home to The Pit, a vast landfill or corpses, still burning, that he feeds with flesh, petrol and more flame. He goes to a supermarket, there is a generator still running, presumably maintained by Morgan, and he keeps his garlic in the refrigerated meat locker. He takes more mirrors from another store and then he hunts. Methodically Morgan goes from house to house in the city, marking off each location as he searches out the hiding places of the dead.

When he gets home and barricades himself in, and the sun has set, the assault on his house begins. There have been some that have said that these vampires are more like zombies and complained that this is not a vampire movie. There are vast differences, yes they shamble and are of a lower level of reasoning, but they use tools, smashing at the house with sticks, they can speak and have memory. The main vampire outside the house calls for Morgan. He is Ben Cortman (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), erstwhile friend and work colleague of Morgan. We should also remember that these vampires are the dead, they have died of plague and then have come back from the grave – as such they are reminiscent of the vampiric revenants of myth. We must further note that zombies do not fear their own reflection, are not stakable (in the heart at least) and are not repelled by garlic.

One of the problems with the film, as marvellous as Price is in his portrayal of Morgan, is the fact that he seems an unlikely action hero. There is a sequence, when he is late back to the house having fallen asleep at his wife’s grave, where he fights through the vampires (who then smash his car through the night as it is not safely away in his garage). This highlights this problem, but it is only one of perception on my part as a viewer. Later we hear that individually they do not scare Morgan as they are ineffectual, it is their weight of numbers that frightens him.

We discover what has happened to the world through flashback. Morgan and Cortman were employed by a science institute, looking into a plague that was sweeping through Europe. That plague obviously travelled, the film indicating it was wind-born. As more and more fell to the plague a state of emergency was called, the dead burned in The Pit – the official reason being that it was for public health but some believing rumours that the dead were returning. Morgan’s daughter Kathy (Christi Courtland) fell to it first in his family, the army taking her away to The Pit. Then his wife Virginia (Franca Bettoia) died. Morgan took her to the country and buried her, rather than have her thrown in The Pit. It is a marvellously haunting scene when he hears a whispering outside the house, and sees the door handle turning, then, as he opens the door, we see the horror on his face as Virginia comes to him her hands grasping forward.

Morgan doesn’t really know why he survived, but suspects that it had something to do with a bat bite he suffered in Panama years before. He has theorised that the bat carried a version of the disease and he became immune.

Of course, if you have read the book, you’ll know that there are not just the dead vampires. Morgan eventually finds Ruth (Franca Bettoia), a woman who walks in the daylight. He takes her in, but is suspicious of her and then discovers that she is infected, she has a serum that holds back the spread of the disease and her and others are rebuilding society. Unfortunately there is no place for a legendary monster like Morgan in this new world, a solitary creature who stalks the daylight killing indiscriminately – many of those he killed were alive.

The film spirals on to an end that, whilst having the same result of the book, reaches that ending via a much different route.

Other than the issues of seeing Vincent Price in action sequences there are other problems with the film. The direction, whilst competent, just doesn’t allow level of paranoia to reach the levels that perhaps the book attained and, on a more technical level, there are issues with day and night shots being annoyingly intermingled, so it is daylight when it should be night – but that is typical for the films of the time this was shot.

The greatest thing about the film, however, is Price, despite my action scene misgivings. He really acts his socks off and, given that he is the sole player for much of the film, the film is carried by his marvellous voice – mostly heard in voice-over. A scene, as he watches home movies, and is driven first to maniacal laughter and then to tears highlights perfectly just how good Price’s performance was. This should serve as a warning to anyone making a version of the book, you need a lead actor with the gravitas to command the screen, Price had that.

I am Legend is crying out for an accurate conversion to film, and it is all too apparent that the chances of that happening are remote. However, whilst we wait, this is the best adaptation you can see of the book. 7 out of 10.

The film is public domain and can be downloaded at The Archive. Note that the version available for download is not the widescreen print.

The imdb page is here.

A look at the colour re-master is here.
I’ll leave this with Morgan’s words at the end of the movie, as realisation finally dawns upon him all too late, “They were afraid of me.”