Meadhall of the Comitatus

I’m sure I must’ve mentioned this somewhere before, but I’m a sucker for the end of the world.  I’m also a sucker for Richard Matheson’s classic book I Am Legend.  How can I say no to a movie based on that which also stars Mr. Vincent Price?  You’re damn right I can’t.

They had to get it right eventually, didn't they?

Premise: 3/5

I haven’t seen Will Smith’s I Am Legend movie, so I can’t say for sure how faithful it is to the source.  But right here with The Last Man on Earth I can probably say with at least 99% accuracy that this movie is far and away more true to the original.  It’s certainly got The Omega Man beat in that department, at least.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the story (and if you’re not, you should make yourself familiar with it, stat!), Robert Neville (they call him Robert Morgan in the movie for some reason) is a scientist who is, as far as he knows, the last man on earth.  It’s been three years since a worldwide plague killed basically everyone in the world—but the nasty trick is that the people who die because of this plague come back as mindless vampire/zombies.  Our hero spends all of his daylight hours making sure he’s keeping his home defenses up to snuff, scavenging for garlic and gasoline as needed, and tracking down and staking all the vampires he can find in the time he has before darkness falls and the living dead roam the streets once again.  At night he barricades himself in his home, drinking and mourning the past, until day comes around and he does it all over again—until one day when . . . nah, I won’t spoil it.  Not because you need to see this movie, but because you should just hurry up and read the book already.  Seriously.  Go do it now.  I’ll wait.

In the meantime, this could be a home movie of one of Vincent Price's date nights.

It’s a great concept as both a character study and a hell of a good horror tale, and as I stated before, the movie is remarkably true to the book for the most part.  I expect that’s got a lot to do with Richard Matheson himself being a co-writer for the screenplay (though the story goes that Matheson wasn’t happy with the final product and so had himself credited as Logan Swanson instead of having it under his real name).  The day-to-day grind for survival, Robert’s questioning of why he’s even continuing to try, and the air of desolation and sadness that permeates everything are all well-done, for the most part.  The problem is that what makes for an intense and engaging read doesn’t always make for an interesting movie, and sometimes when Vincent Price is monologue-narrating what he’s doing that day, or remembering the past it’s got all the raw power of hearing Price reciting a grocery list.  This gets to be pretty disappointing, and feels more than a little bit like hand-holding so that the audience doesn’t have to do too much thinking to follow what’s going on.  Still, I applaud this movie getting so much of what made I Am Legend the book so very right.

One thing I would be remiss to leave out is the very distinct possibility that, if this movie had never come about, we might not have ever had the original Night of the Living Dead.  When you see the odd shuffling gait of the vampozombies in this movie, or the scenes where the dead are trying to bust into Robert’s home, it becomes immediately obvious how much inspiration Romero took from this movie (and I believe he’s even said as much).  And that’s no bad thing, because it really worked here and just got better with Romero’s refinement.  And a world without Night of the Living Dead is a world I shudder even to think of.

And this is what a date with me usually looks like. Just kidding! I don't date. I skip straight to chloroform.

Cast: 2/5

There’s pretty much only one person in this cast: Vincent Price as Robert Morgan.  Honestly, that isn’t such a good thing.  He’s good in about half of this movie, I guess, but since the whole movie rests on his shoulders the times when he doesn’t play up to par are that much more damaging.  He handles the world-weary, burnt-out hermit aspects of the character well enough.  The problems arise when he’s seen in flashbacks before the world ended as the family man, and later when he’s trying to catch a dog that’s the first living thing he’s seen in three years—I guess I just don’t think he’s good in scenes that have him interacting with anyone but himself or the zombpires he’s killing during the day.  I suppose that could just be me not able to get past Vincent Price as the king of creepy weirdoes or in villainous roles, but I simply don’t find him magnetic enough as the good guy to keep my interest up.  I have to respect him for carrying as much of the movie on his own as he does, though, so I’ll just give him a pass on this one.

Do NOT get me started on little miss LSD here.

Technical: 3/5

There isn’t much to talk about special effects-wise in this movie.  The vamp-bies probably have even less make up on than Romero’s, which is to say almost none.  Still, it does drive home the fact that these things USED to be human, and now all they want to do is kill.  On top of that, the gradual desolation of the world during the middle flashback-heavy part of the movie is handled well and wind actually comes across as kind of creepy.  Not only do we see a news headline about Europe’s plague possibly being airborne (this is obviously before it hits America), but the use of the wind and the dead leaves blowing in slowly but increasingly steadily over the passing scenes does do a great job of putting a single haunting face on the end of the world.  It’s probably not something you haven’t seen done already, but it still works pretty damn well here.

Repo . . . OF THE LIVING DEAD!

Popcorn Factor: 2/5

I don’t know what it is about this movie, but even with it being so faithful to its source and so neatly creepy on its own, it still feels a bit dull and under-paced.  It’s kind of cool to see this proto-Night of the Living Dead, but only if you’re a zombie historian or want to see a movie that’s the closest you’ll probably ever get to I Am Legend.  The thing is, you should probably just read the damn book instead.  The awesome twist at the end of the book still shows up here, but it comes out rather flat in spite of itself, and a lot of the character development is rushed or just feels forced.  I wish I could have spent more time in Robert’s head and not spent that time hearing Vincent Price tell me what’s in Robert’s head.  Even though it’s not a bad movie at all, I’m not 100% sure I can tell you it’s a must see.  It’s interesting and seems pretty groundbreaking in some places, but I just can’t be sure I didn’t already come into this biased towards the book and the soon-to-follow Night of the Living Dead.