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 Vincent Price plays Robert Morgan, the only person immune to a plague that has
turned everyone else into a vampire. Morgan becomes a "monster slayer" so that
he can survive and in the process he also scares the "vampire community"
(really?). They call this place a "nightmare world" and the film is referred
to as a "dark and intriguing" one. They also note that it was later remade as
The Omega Man with Charlton Heston playing the Vincent Price role. 1965, 85 minutes, DVD
This Italian-made cheapie is based on the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson,
who apparently didn't like the movie and had his name changed or taken off or
something in protest. Whatever, crybaby. Despite a retarded ending, this was
a classic in the Vincent Price-movies-where-Vincent
Price-didn't-make-me-want-to-slap-some-manliness-into-him genre. For the most
part he was wuss-free. It was not a flawless performance, but more on that
later. Vincent plays scientist Richard Morgan. All these movie seem to star
scientists. Whatever happened to the cop on suspension, or the cop with the
rookie partner who's really green, or the cop just a few days away from
retirement? Morgan is all alone in his house when we meet him. He's puttering
about doing what most of us bachelors do in our downtime: sharpen wooden
stakes, load the door up with fresh garlic, and use our shortwave radio to see
if there is anyone else left alive on the planet. It seems as if some type of
plague has either killed everyone or turned them into a vampire, with Morgan
being the lone exception. Towards the end of the movie he theorizes that he
was immune to the plague because he was bitten by a vampire bat and that has
something to do with the plague. Of course there is nothing mentioned about
the plague that would lead you to believe that vampire bats had anything to do
with it. This whole idea is kind of hokey when you actually break it down. I
mean, a plague that causes you to die, come back to life thirsting for blood,
but also leaving you vulnerable to all the traditional defenses against these
bloodsuckers (wooden stakes, garlic, mirrors, crosses). So anyway it's been
three long
years since Morgan began to battle these creatures. We know that because he has
written a calendar on the wall of his house. You'd think he'd just be able to
drive down to Staples and take a planner or something, what with him being the
last man on Earth and all. Morgan needs some more fresh garlic, so he decides it's time to go grocery
shopping. This sequence allows us to glimpse what Morgan's world has become.
It literally has become a living hell. He drives a station wagon because he
needs to use it as a hearse to ferry all the corpses he stabs to the open pits
that burn continuously, fed by the bodies he dumps into them. Those scenes are
really creepy. Morgan dons a gas mask and starts chucking corpses over the
cliff into these fiery pits. The sense of hopelessness as he does this is
overwhelming. For every corpse he incinerates he drives by five more laying in
the streets. As he drives through the city, we see wrecked cars, empty streets,
and deserted buildings. There is also very little sound. Most of the first
part of the movie is Morgan doing a voice over so that we can hear what he's
thinking. It all adds to the isolation and loneliness that the filmmakers want
to convey to us (one of the directors was apparently the brother of Price's
agent!). Of course, as so often happens in these films, they overdo it a bit
and so there is a scene where you actually see tumbleweed blow across the road!
Come on! Is this the old west or something? I kept waiting for Wyatt Earp to
challenge one of these vampires to a gunfight at high noon! So Morgan heads
out to Safeway and picks up about six gross of garlic and decides he needs to
make a pitstop at the cemetery. There he visits his dead wife's grave and ends
up falling asleep there. He wakes up and sees that it's dark outside and he
boogies! Once the sun goes down the zombies come out! He gets to his car and
has to beat down several zombies in some really pathetic fights. As wimpy as
Morgan is, these zombies aren't any great shakes either. They sort of lunge at
you and some of them may swing some 2x4s at you in slow motion, but anyone
under 75 years of age ought to be able to fight these sissies off! Morgan
makes it home and battles through some more vampires/zombies including Ben
Cortland who we find out was his best friend back in the day.  Morgan settles in for nice evening of booze and home movies. He watches his
wife, who tragically has a Jackie O hairdo and his daughter at the kid's
birthday party. Ben is there and everyone is happy and soon Morgan is upset
and wah-wahing a bunch and then we close in on his face and my big toe started
to twitch. It always twitches when there's about to be a flashback sequence.
Then the picture starts to get wavy and for once it's not because the print
Diamond used on this DVD sucked ass, but because we were getting into the
Way-Back
Machine, back to a time when the plague was still a few months away and
everyone was happy and Robert and Ben worked together to try and find a cure
for the plague (oh, by the way guys, nice job on that whole "cure the plague"
thing). Morgan's wife is one of those perpetually cheery types who darts
around the birthday party with this whole "I'm a silly girl" demeanor that
makes you wonder why Morgan didn't get some early practice in on that wooden
stake through the heart deal. Morgan and Ben mess around at the lab trying to
figure out a way to combat the plague. I guess Morgan hadn't come up with his
vampire bat theory yet. All the while people are croaking and the army is sent
in with trucks and gas masks and forcibly takes the corpses away to be burned
in the pits. They won't allow them to be buried because they'll just dig their
way out and raise a ruckus. So you get some good scenes of parents being
anguished when their dead kids are taken away to be burned. What other movie
gives you that? Morgan's daughter dies and she's given the old heave-ho into
the
pits and Morgan is P.O.ed about that and then his wife croaks, so he hides that
fact from authorities and goes out and buries her secretly. Of course, that
night guess who's coming around the house, banging on the door looking for some
of that Morgan-nookie? You got it, a really old, nasty version of Morgan's
dearly departed wife! He looks at her and says something like, "damn!" Then
he shuts the door on her ugly puss. The next day (I guess) Morgan finds a dog! It's a black poodle that is just
the cutest little snookums you've ever seen. Morgan takes it inside, cleans it
up
and is delighted to have a friend. Uh-oh, I thought, this movie's going to
cheap out and have him team up with his wonderdog or something and they'll be
good
buddies and maybe find a nice lady and a nice lady dog and move to somewhere
warm without zombies and live happily ever after. But thankfully this movie is
without any hope and you get no favors from it, only the immensity of the doom
that has befallen Morgan. But now he has a doggie to play with, right?
Right? Morgan checks out the dog's hair under a microscope and starts to laugh.
The next scene is of Morgan dumping a snookums-sized bag into the ground and
burying it! Ahhh, thanks for playing. This guy can't catch a break. But
wait, he see's woman! She's out in the daytime so she isn't a vampire and he
chases her down. Her name is Ruth (like it matters) and he takes her home.
Eventually she pulls a gun on him and reveals her double-crossing ways. You
see it's like this, she's part of a group of people that are infected, but have
a vaccine that keeps the plague from consuming them. It seems that Morgan has
been out killing both members of her group and regular vampires. I guess it's
like Bret Hart used to say, "if I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any
luck at all." Morgan acts
real sorry about that. What a giant pansy! The only good vampire/zombie is
one with a stake through its back! She is supposed to keep him occupied until
the rest of her group can arrive and kill him. They show up and try to kill
him, and also fight with the regular zombies. Morgan escapes but gets trapped
in a church and gets impaled with an iron spear at the altar in the church.
Ruth walks away, having been cured by Morgan's blood earlier. This is really a great movie that is just unrelenting in its nightmarish gloom
and doom. The last man on Earth manages to avoid a civilization-ending
disease, but is still double-crossed by a woman! Classic! Watching this you
can't really avoid thinking of the original Night of the Living Dead released just three years later. Both filmed in black and white and dealing
with similar themes of the individual being swallowed up by the Future and
the inevitable pull of just going with the flow and joining the group. I mean
wouldn't it have been easier for characters in both movies to just become part
of
that faceless, thoughtless mass of (in)humanity? Yep, but for some reason, we
still see the individual as something noble, something that is worth fighting
against all odds to maintain. Of course it should be noted that both
individuals in these movies ended up being consumed by the forces they resisted.
So I guess the bottom line is that individuality is good in theory, but in
reality, you won't prevail as your own person. You can only find peace by
joining the collective or by dying. Maybe all that is part of that sixties
mentality that the "Man" will crush any who oppose Him. If you're going to
stand up for your cause, you should expect to perish for your efforts. My own
theory is that Morgan and whatshisface in NOTLD just didn't want it bad enough. I used to have this coach who told me I
wasn't hurting enough and that everyone was hurting but me. Maybe that's the
kind of inspiring pep talk these guys needed. Me? I became state champion!
Or I might have just quit, I forget sometimes. Morgan may have been fighting
off the future,
but he had continued to live in the past. Sleeping at your wife's tomb three
years after fact? Get on with your life. Vincent Price didn't make me upchuck
too bad in this one, but his facial expressions while he was being chased were
hilarious. I have no idea what emotion he was trying to convey, but his eyes
bugged out, his mouth formed funny shapes and his head went to and fro.
Beautiful, my man! Beautiful. What wasn't beautiful was the Diamond DVD.
Yeah, you get this and The House on Haunted Hill on one disc, but holy god, the
picture for Last Man was the worst thing you've ever seen. It looks like they
dragged the print across the floor and stored it in their basement for thirty
years. Blurriness, sound drop outs, flickering, and colored flecks all add up
to the
worst picture quality I've seen on DVD in my life. And you know what? The
movie still kicked ass (course I only paid $6.99).
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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