The Last Man on Earth
USA/Italy, 1964
Director: Sidney Salkow
Screenplay: Richard Matheson (based on his novel I Am Legend), Furio M. Zanfrotti, Ubaldo Ragona
Genre: Science fiction, horror, post-apocalyptic
Soundtrack composer: Paul Sawtell
Editing: Amedeo Giomini
Production: Robert L. Lippert, Sidney Salkow
Cast
Vincent Price (Dr. Robert Morgan)
Franca Bettoia (Ruth Collins)
Emma Danieli (Virginia Morgan)
Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Ben Cortman)
Umberto Raho (Dr. Mercer)
Christi Courtland (Kathy Morgan)
Plot
Robert Morgan is a lonely man, much to his regret. Probably the loneliest man in the world. Although monotonous, his life is very busy, but he is already used to the routine: He gets up in the morning, drinks his coffee, sharpens some stakes, and goes zombie hunting in his empty city. He has a map where he marks the areas he has already checked. During the day, the creatures sleep, and Morgan can surprise them and eliminate them without danger. But he must be back home before dark, because when night falls, hordes of the undead come out to roam the streets dangerously.
Everything indicates that Robert Morgan is the only survivor left after a global plague. And the infected have been transformed into clumsy, corpse-like automatons.
Robert recalls how it all began three years ago, when a deadly virus broke out in Europe, spreading through the air…
Commentary
This is a post-apocalyptic film that pioneered both the pandemic genre and zombie cinema, as this production starring Vincent Price predates even Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1967).
The Last Man on Earth is based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954) and was the first adaptation of this work for the big screen, long before the 2007 film of the same name starring Will Smith.
The film is set in the near future, three years after it was filmed, in 1967 (precisely the year in which Night of the Living Dead was released). It even contains religious and messianic symbolism, which is obvious during the final climax in the church, but which begins to be noticeable from the moment Ruth arrives. Talking to her, he comments that, due to his natural immunity (after being bitten by a bat!), he could be “the chosen one” (to carry out a great reset of humanity with her?).
At first, the main character seems to represent the lonely and misunderstood individual in the modern world; someone who, despite living in the big city, has no one – no friends, and no group to which he feels he belongs (i.e., no identity). He is the anonymous and atomized individual of the great metropolis. But he is not really the only one left. In addition to Robert and the zombie creatures (who talk and still have some level of consciousness), there is an organized group, a kind of “resistance movement,” made up of individuals who are infected but have not developed the disease to the point of mutating into beings from beyond the grave, as they have a vaccine that they must inject themselves with every so often (!).
We are looking at a classic example of predictive programming and negative priming—especially with regard to what happened after 2020. We have bats, viruses, vaccines, a great reset… Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental, folks.
Another interesting detail is that one of the first symptoms of infection is blindness—perhaps a metaphor suggesting that those “infected” (by the system and its manipulations) lose the ability to see… reality.
Moral ambiguities are also raised; the lone hero and aspiring redeeming messiah is confronted with guilt (perhaps some of the “zombies” could have been cured, and he systematically devoted himself to killing them), before facing the organized mob that seeks to punish him (in the church, like a Christ who must sacrifice himself to bring about the beginning of a new humanity…).
There is already a film from the 1930s, “White Zombie” (Victor Halperin, 1932), starring Bela Lugosi, but set in Haiti and in the context of voodoo—which is where the phenomenon of this type of undead arises. However, the zombie craze (with its global reach, beyond mere Haitian folkloric horror) would take off in cinema following the success of George Romero. And “The Last Man on Earth” was filmed shortly before that.
Both the plot and the style of this film would fit right in with the “Historias para no dormir” (Stories to Stay Awake) series, which was also produced in Spain in the 1960s by the great Narciso „Chicho“ Ibáñez Serrador.
Felix Hahlbrock Ponce
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