The Last Man on Earth (1964)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Ubaldo Ragona

Writers:

Richard Matheson (novel) and
William F. Leicester (writer)

Release Date:

8 March 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi | Drama

Tagline:

By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!

Plot:

Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a devastating world-wide plague due to a mysterious...

Plot Keywords:

Plague | Night | Survivor | Disease | Scientist

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
Antonio Corevi	...	Governor (as Tony Corevi)
Ettore Ribotta	...	TV Reporter (as Hector Ribotta)
Rolando De Rossi

Also Known As:

L'ultimo uomo della terra (Italy) (dubbed version)
Naked Terror
Night People
The Night Creatures
Vento di morte
Wind of Death

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA | Italy

Language:

English | Italian

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG (2007) | UK:X (1966) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Australia:PG | Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

E.U.R., Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Associated Producers (API)

Trivia:

Richard Matheson felt Vincent Price was miscast as Robert Morgan.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the flashback sequence where Morgan takes his wife's body in his car for a secret burial, the shots of him inside the car driving shows that it is night or pre-dawn. However, the exterior shots of the car moving along on the road show that it is already daylight.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Robert Morgan: Another day to live through. Better get started.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Silent Hill (2006)

Amazing film! The apocalypse rarely felt this real.

I never read Richard Matheson's novel 'I am Legend' but I'm particularly intrigued by (science fiction) movies with an apocalyptic theme. And this adaptation simply is one of the most fascinating stories of an already brilliant decade for this type of films. Much more than a grim horror film, this is a gripping drama with an excellent (as always) Vincent Price as the sole and devastated survivor of a deadly plague that exterminated the entire human race, including his own wife and daughter. Price is Dr. Robert Morgan and due to his immunity to the lethal germs, he's the only one to fight victims who return in the shape of vampire/zombie-like creatures. Even though it has already been 3 years, Morgan desperately continues his search for other survivors…This is one of the most impressive performances Price ever gave away, and a lot more difficult than his usual roles of villains and madmen. Judging by today's standards, I guess the film looks very dated and you can't really refer to the tame 'vamp-zombies' as threatening anymore. But the empty streets and depressing cities, shot in unsettling black and white, still are the ultimate in eeriness! I love it when a film makes you feel miserable and worried…and the lower the budget is, the more efficient this effect is reached!

Like several of my fellow-reviewers already pointed out, this also was an immensely influential film. You can't watch 'Last man on Earth' without being reminded of George A. Romero's milestone genre film 'Night of the Living Dead'. If you then realize this movie was made 4 years before Romero's classic, you can't but reckon the underrated brilliance of this film. The same hopelessness-aspect that made Romero's film so tense features HERE first, in 'Last Man on Earth'! This production offers an ideal proportion of frights and sentiments, luckily without too many tedious scientific speeches or faked drama. 'Last Man on Earth' has to be seen by every SF/horror fan on this planet. For some reason this is one of the most underrated genre efforts ever, and that urgently has to change.