Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), which itself is considered a seminal modern zombie flick. The nightly attack on Morgan's home with creatures obsessively trying to break through his doors and windows is obviously the inspiration for George A. Some of the vampires of this movie are closer to what became known as zombies in later films, the lumbering and dim-witted undead. Trailer for The last Man on Earth, the 1964 movie take on I Am Legend.

But he is an interesting actor to watch in any role and is particularly good here at depicting Neville, er, Morgan slowly going mad from loneliness and regret. Price's patrician demeanor and sonorous tones seem particularly at odds with the man of action who fights through mobs of the undead and searches out the vampires' lairs at night to drive stakes through their hearts. Not that he's cast well as this film's lead either. The film has been criticized for this but, really, can you see Vincent Price as an everyman

The lead character as been renamed from Robert Neville to Robert Morgan and he is a scientist who was previously working on curing the plague, as opposed to the novella's working-class everyman who teaches himself science in response to the plague. It still stands as the most faithful adaptation of the book. The revised title, The Last Man on Earth, might give you another idea.īut in fact, the 1964 movie does a decent job of covering all-or at least most of-the bases. The casting of horror star Vincent Price in the first adaptation of I Am Legend might give you an idea of what the particular emphasis of this black-and-white film is going to be. Ragona featuring Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Umberto Raho Ragona writers Logan Swanson (Richard Matheson), William F. The Last Man on Earth (1964): Directors Sidney Salkow, Ubaldo B. The three movie versions-four if you count an uncredited knockoff-each select from these themes and develop them differently. Or the warning of apocalypse due to warfare, disease or ecological collapse. Or it can emphasize the science, good and bad. One of the benefits of Richard Matheson packing so many diverse story elements into I Am Legend is that the novella can be interpreted in many different ways on the screen.Īn adaptation can focus on the horror elements (and even then can choose where on the zombie/vampire spectrum its apparent monsters reside). Vincent Price fends off zombies as the 'last man on earth' in the 1964 adaptation of I Am Legend.

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