#VincentPrice #MovieReviews #Zombies
Vincent Price, a post-apocalypse setting and vampire zombies. What more do you need?
The Last Man on Earth from 1964 is just amazing. It's a bleak, dreary film in which Vincent Price, as Dr. Robert Morgan, is the last man on earth. And man, does he seem weary about it. His daily routine is to make coffee, radio for anyone who is listening, step outside, find dead bodies, bring them to a pit to burn them, scavenge for groceries and supplies, kill a few months, rinse and repeat. Then each night, with his house covered with mirrors and garlic, listen to the moaning and taunting of mysterious vampire zombie monsters.
I love seeing this horror icon in this role, looking full of despair and hopelessness, as his voiceover reveals that it's been around three years he's been alone, and you can hear the tired defeat in his voice. I mean, I can't understand how anyone could keep going a few weeks, let alone three years, in conditions like that, but he sticks to his routine. His house is a mess of supplies and wires, the habitat of a man who just doesn't care.
So yes, a big part of his routine is to seek out sleeping vampire zombies and and driving a steak into them. And each night these same zombie vampires appear, stagger around his house and, apparently, know his name. "Morgan.. come out..." they say. So that right there is creepy.
So Morgan goes to a masoleum to light candles for a vigil and manages to fall asleep. Bad move, Vincent. He wakes, the sun has set, and the zombie monsters are all out, so he has to rush home and fight through them to get into his house. Right off the bat I'm noticing the similarities with the two sequels to this, also based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, which were 1971's The Omega Man (with Charleton Heston, who was a much more vigorous vampire killer) and 'I Am Legend' from 2007 with Wil Smith, a film I really loved and will probably talk about in the future.
I love these formula films, and it's the kind of thing you stay awake at night thinking about: how would you survive if it was just you? Beyond the basics of survival such as food, water and shelter, how long could you last without human companionship? some great questions here.
There's really a vibe of Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" from (1968) that this film predates. The staggering, slow-moving zombies, smashing at windows and doors relentlessly. And these are zombies with vestiges of memories, too, and that makes them all that more creepy.
Now to be fair the film can drag a little in places, but otherwise the pacing is fine and you really want to see what happens to the Morgan character. I believe this was made in Italy and he was the only English-speaking actor but that's a minor detail and didn't really affect the look of the film too much (I thought you can see it in the look of the actresses though). The filming locations are great, particularly the big, open areas empty of people. And as mentioned, Morgan's trashed house looks convincing as well.
This film, along with Omega Man and I Am Legend, all have their own merits and enjoyable qualities, so I can't rank one as better than the others, but this one definitely felt weightier with despair. I'd encourage you to check this one out, as well as those other two, for three notably different interpretations of how the one man left alive reacts to his situation:
- With Vincent Price it felt more like weighty despair
- With Charleton Heston its more of power, and guns!
- With Wil Smith it's raw survival with determination to cure
At least, that's my take. Go and check these out for yourself.
The Last Man on Earth was a great film and worth checking out.
