The Last Man on Earth vs I am Legend
The Last Man on Earth vs I am Legend
The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price: I’ve been threatening myself with an end of the world-a-thon for some time. This disk is a double feature of “the Hose on Haunted Hill” and “The Last man on Earth”, both starring Vincent price. A rather young Vincent Price. A very whiny Vincent Price. I decided I didn’t really like Vincent Price’s voice, he’s a whiny geek. In this one, he’s living in a farmhouse that is for some reason impenetrable even though the zombie/vampires spend much of the night trying to bash their way into the house. Yet somehow he is able to sleep with the sound of his house being bashed repeatedly.
At the end of this one, we’re not left with a lot of hope. Our hero is hunted down by a smartly dressed militia of infextees who for some reason aren’t debilitated as the zombies shown earlier were. They all wear matching black shirt and pants and have nice guns. Don’t know where they found these nice things in a world which has no manufacturing any more. It doesn’t seem like our hero is very resourceful: despite that this is three years after the plague happened, he’s still gathering garlic in quantity from a grocery and somehow finding it to be strong. No evidence of him growing anything, and he’s stil getting mirrors from a store that seems to have just been set up for business. Oh ues, these vamire/zombies can’t stand their reflection, and wreaths of garland on the door somehow make them not able to bash it down.
The vampire/zombies are mostly like “traditional” vampires: afraid of garlic, afraid of their reflection in a mirror, have to be staked in the heart to really kill thsm. But (at first, at least) they’re about as sentient as the zombies in “Night of the LIving Dead” pretty easy to outrun, and you can just push them around a bit in close range.
In the end, he is taken down by a spear thrown by a one of a gang of the zombies. A sample of his life-saving blood is rescued, but it’s not clear that anyone else will benefit from it.
“I am Legend” (2007) starring Will Smith: This one’s a take off of the same book, “I am a Legend” by Richard Matheson. I watched The Omega Man a few months ago, but didn’t realize at the time that it was related to another the previous movie. I was intending to watch all three in succession but had had enough of disease carried on the wind from the other two.
One of the highlight of this one is that it shows a New York City after three years of human neglect. The trees are taking over a bit, there are deer and packs of lions to watch out for. I guess Lions are sexier, as evidenced by their appearance in “12 Monkeys”. Apparently the plague took out the dogs, too, or I would expect packs of wild dogs.
In both of these movies the plague is created by science reseaarch, a mutation of the measles virus which supposedly kills cancer. The cure3 goes wrong and suddenly almost everyone is dead. While Vincent Price was completely alone, Will Smith gets to have a dog as his companion. For a while I was wondering if this was a remake of “A Boy and his Dog” because of the close relationship he has with his german shepherd Samantha, usually referred to as Sam. We see the craziness brought on by loneliness: He’s set up mannekins in various places and he converses with them.
While Vincent was serious, Will is smart-assed, making wise crack jokes to his imaginary neighbors. But at Wil Smith knows how to grow corn. In New York.