Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
How many of us see those movies where the population is whittled down to a pittance and wondered how they’d handle being one of only a handful of survivors in the world? Probably most of us. How many have wondered how they’d handle being the ONLY person left? Maybe not as many, but I’m sure a lot. I know I have. Anti-social by nature, I’ve often looked around town, especially while I’m out for a walk on a quiet day, and imagined I was the only person left with nowhere to go, nothing to do and all day to do it. It’s a nice fantasy when your co-workers are going out of their way to prove how stupid they are or the bills are piling up and you’re trying to decide how little you can get away with buying at the grocery store and still eat for the week. But the reality would be something entirely different. Once humanity is gone, nature will reclaim the world. All those silent, empty streets you imagine speeding down whenever you feel like it will be overrun by weeds and cracks and animals. Unless you spend the first week or two of your solitude eating all the fruits and vegetables in your local grocery store, they’ll probably be unsuitable to enter once all that produce goes bad. And gasoline goes stale, so eventually you’re either biking or walking everywhere. Break your leg? Hobble. Toothache? Suffer. Hungry? Better plan ahead for that and start planting early.
No, the fantasy is good for an hour, but the reality would be so much more than I believe any one person could truly handle. Unfortunately for Dr. Robert Morgan in the 1960 movie THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, it’s a reality he’s been living with for the past 3 years.
In 1965 a mysterious plague swept the world, claiming the lives of everyone around the globe--as far as Morgan can tell--except the good doctor who has spent those past three years making sure he’s got food, gas in his car and in his generator (the light and power company--as well as water, sewer, and gas--don’t just run themselves, you know), maintaining his own physical health, and guarding against the vampires that come out every night and try to kill him.
Did I forget to mention the vampires? THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is the first of, to date, three movie adaptations of the brilliant Richard Matheson novel I AM LEGEND, followed by THE OMEGA MAN in 1971 and I AM LEGEND in 2007. In the movie, as in the novel, victims of the plague return from the dead as vampires. These aren’t the suave, sharp-toothed variety, more like the Romero zombies, only they get sick from garlic, you can stake them, they’re afraid of mirrors, and they only come out at night.
Morgan, played expertly by Vincent Price, spends his days making sure his house is fortified, then canvassing the town trying to stake as many as he can in an afternoon, and his nights are busy at home eating dinner and watching old movies of his family while the vampires pound on his doors and windows yelling for him to come out.
Running just under 90 minutes, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is well-plotted with the story being broken into 3 equal sections. The first half hour is spent introducing Morgan and the situation, while the second half hour flashes back to how it all started, showing us the death of Morgan’s family as well as the rest of the world, then we’re back to present for the conclusion wherein Morgan meets one other survivor who turns out not to be quite the survivor he’d at first thought and the entire theme of the story begins to unfold. This theme, as in the novel, revolves around perception and how, in this new world, Morgan is the real monster while the plague victims are the new norm. I don’t think the idea is spelled out quite as well in the movie as in the novel, but it’s still an interesting idea and one I’m glad they kept for the movie, considering it was the entire point to Matheson’s story--a point sadly overlooked in the Will Smith version, but I digress.
I was disappointed in the plausibility of the story, especially in certain details. Morgan mentions how the vampires are weak and stupid otherwise they’d have found a way in long ago, but, sht, dude, that doesn’t mean you don’t guard against it anyway. Instead he’s got boards nailed across his broken windows at random, keeps his lights on all night, plays records. He falls asleep one afternoon in the church--which is decorated with crosses the vampires avoid, not to mention an iron gate out front to which Morgan has the key--and when he wakes up after sundown, instead of just holing up in safety for the night, he runs outside and fights off a handful of vampires to get in his car and drive home where he fights off another handful to get into the house. What? I’d have been living in the church a long time ago. Also, he mopes around, smoking cigarettes and skipping breakfast, which is sure to keep him in top physical condition for when the monsters attack.
But these are just goofy details of an old movie, the important thing is the story and the performances. There are few people with the screen presence to carry an entire movie on their own. Yes, I believe Will Smith did it in the 2007 version, and John Cusack carried �” just fine on his own. Vincent Price is another. His demeanor in the beginning shows how far he’s been broken down by the events and his slightly monotone narration conveys a hint of confusion as if he’s still a bit rattled by it all.
The effects are nothing special, just a little dirt on the clothes of the vampires and a mess of the hair. The fight sequences were apparently choreographed underwater by an 80-year-old man who’d never been in a fight in his life. But the scenes of the empty town and Morgan’s efforts to survive--unlike the novel, he makes no attempt in the movie to cure the problem, only live through it--give you pause and a whole new outlook on that end of the world fantasy.
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH was an awesome movie and while I can’t say it’s a trendsetter or was a huge blockbuster (based on a novel, the story is already not original and the story goes when Charlton Heston read the book he decided he wanted to make a movie adaptation--THE OMEGA MAN--unaware one already existed--this one), it is one of Price’s best performances and, bad logic aside, earns some “classic” status as the first of many adaptations of a great book. Definitely recommended.
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