I started writing this review Sunday evening and decided to spend time with Dr. Wife, who is now done with residency and living here in our South Carolina house permanently! This morning was full of errands, including taking Nugget to the vet for her annual visit and taking care of things around the house. Ergo, I’m finally getting around to finishing up this review. —TPP

Also, this post includes some Amazon Affiliate links (the book and movie titles). I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links at no additional cost to you. —TPP

On Saturday I wrote about Richard Matheson’s novella I Am Legend, which I enjoyed reading over the past week. What prompted me to purchase the book was re-watching its 1964 film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth. The film stars Vincent Price is the role of Robert Neville, the titular last man on Earth not to succumb to a terrible plague that turns people into vampires.

The film very closely follows the events of the book, although it obviously streamlines some things and changes a few details. For example, while the film does capture some of the psychological turmoil and terror that wracks Neville as the only human alive, it downplays his furious temper and self-loathing. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by his daily tasks, Price’s Neville seems to be a bit more taciturn about it—almost matter-of-fact. It’s as though preparing his house for nightly attacks by weak vampires (and killing as many as he can during the daylight hours) is just another day at the office.

Also, instead of listening to classical music to drown out the nocturnal attempts on his life, he blasts chaotic 1960s jazz, which is probably played better with hip young theatergoers. It does seem to capture the confused, scary existence of such a post-apocalyptic world a bit better than Mozart, although I imagine I’ll get some pushback on that in the comments.

A more significant difference is that the vampires in The Last Man on Earth are far more lethargic than the ones in I Am Legend. Matheson writes about the latter vampires “running”; the vampires in the former are more like zombies: they shuffle and feebly attack Neville’s fortified home. The book also has the space to explore Neville’s exploration of the causes of the vampiric plague, and to test why the vampires are afraid of crosses and can’t stand the stench of garlic. Additionally, the Neville of the novella (Neville Novella?) is aware that some of the vampires are undead—those who have died and risen from the grave—while some of still-living people infected with the disease, while Price’s Neville is surprised to learn this fact from Ruth, the woman who shows up at his home in the last third of the film.

My initial exposure to big-screen adaptations of Matheson’s book was the 2007 Will Smith vehicle, I Am Legend (2007). That movie (as I recall) features more ghoulish and quick-moving vampires than The Last Man on Earth, but both feature Neville as a gifted scientist bringing his intellectual abilities and scientific training to bear to solve an extremely difficult problem. I don’t recall much about the 2007 version now, but The Last Man on Earth does have Neville figure out a cure and/or treatment of the vampirism (which makes the ending even more tragic).

In the book, however, Neville is the son of a scientific father, but he conscientiously rejected his father’s profession and went to work in a factory. Much of the novella, then, deals with Neville making up for lost time and ponderously teaching himself anatomy, biology, and physiology from library books. It makes his wrestling with the plague more realistic, as he is one man attempting to figure out what the best scientists of his world couldn’t figure out before succumbing to the plague. He does get some concrete answers, but it’s a painful process for him. It’s almost like watching someone try to solve the hardest crossword puzzle ever devised while his life hangs in the balance.

Having read the book, I have a deeper appreciation for this film. While the Will Smith flick was the first adaptation I saw, The Last Man on Earth is the version of this story that plays in my head when I imagine the movie. It definitely played in my head while I read the book (it was fun picturing Neville as Vincent Price). The black-and-white gives the film an eerie quality, and really makes the zombified vampires creepy (even though they’re just normal-looking people sauntering and limping around with two-by-fours).

You can pick up Last Man on Earth on DVD for super cheap, or you can watch it for free with ads on YouTube (totally legally—it’s through YouTube’s own movie channel):

Happy Monday—and Happy Viewing!

—TPP