I Am Legend is the third trip down Richard Matheson’s quirky and creepy examination of what it would be like to be the last man on earth. I remain unconvinced of Will Smith’s talent; like Eddie Murphy back in the 80s, Smith seems to run on one cylinder, the smart-assed, hip black dude. If you are like me and you’re just not moved to shell out at least six or seven bucks to watch Smith do his shtick once again, but you like the idea of a movie that shows what life would be like for the last man on earth, then I suggest you rent the first movie version of Matheson’s book. It is titled, as you may have guessed, The Last Man on Earth.
Made on a very low budget in 1964 and starring Vincent Price, Matheson’s I Am Legend was first remade just a few years later as the less inspiring Charlton Heston film The Omega Man. (The Simpsons Halloween Treehouse of Horror parody is far better.) What makes The Last Man on Earth so chilling is apparently also the best thing about the Will Smith version: the sense of isolation in the world. Of course, the makers of The Last Man on Earth accomplished this on roughly one-thousandth of the budget of the current I Am Legend. To be fair, although I haven’t seen I Am Legend except for the previews, the sense of desolation in the original is far less encompassing. Despite that, there are many good reasons to watch the original.
The Last Man on Earth is hardly a masterpiece and contains plenty of cheesy qualities, but one thing is almost certain: the ambience and mood of the low-budget version is nearly certain to be kept intact better than the big budget if only because when you spend that much money on a movie you’d better give it some action somehow. There is action in the Last Man on Earth and there are zombies, but they are better called vampire-zombies. In fact, watching this movie it is plain to see where George Romero got his inspiration for Night of the Living Dead. But this is not a Will Smith action movie. The overwhelming tone of The Last Man on Earth is one of despair. In some ways, this is a pretty darn depressing movie, but isn’t that as it should be? No doubt we’ve all fantasized about what we would do if we were the last person alive, from hunting down our nemesis and exacting posthumous revenge upon them to moving into the biggest mansion in town and living a life of isolated luxury. Everything would be great for about a week, but by then the fact there is nobody else around would deflate the fun of being able to literally do anything we wanted. Once that sense of isolation grips you, the anxiety would seem to be overwhelming. Vincent Price expertly demonstrates the overly heightened sense of hysteria that would surely accompany that last man on earth.
This movie is one of the finest examples of how black and white is the ideal choice for filmmakers. It is a simple fact of the medium that shadows and lighting can extend the thematic material of a movie like this much better-in most cases-than color. I’ve yet to see a color movie that portrays desolation better than a black and white movie. And those scene showing entire sections of a town deserted of human inhabitants weren’t done inside a computer, but rather by getting up early in the morning and shooting in Rome before the rest of the city rolled out of bed. The Last Man on Earth uses all the tools of the medium itself to create a wasteland borne of an infection and then introduces a secondary infection to make some pretty impressive statements about some of the most primal elements of the human condition. One day about six months from now, you might want to consider a triple feature DVD marathon of The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man and I Am Legend. And you just might be surprised which version you’d rather watch again.
