The Last Man on Earth (1964)
A plague has turned everyone into slow, sun-fearing undead, and one immune scientist spends his days burning bodies and staking sleepers, his nights barricaded while they claw at the walls calling his name. Then he meets a woman who seems alive. The first film of Matheson's *I Am Legend*.
The template for Night of the Living Dead four years early: one man, a boarded house, and the dead who used to be neighbours.
Background
The Last Man on Earth was filmed in Italy and stars Vincent Price as a scientist who appears to be the sole survivor of a plague that has turned the rest of humanity into vampiric, undead creatures. It is the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, which was later adapted again as The Omega Man in 1971 and I Am Legend in 2007. Matheson worked on the screenplay but was unhappy with changes made to it and used a pseudonym in the credits.
What to watch for
Watch for how much of the film rests on Price alone: long stretches show him going through a grim daily routine of barricading his house, burning bodies, and staking the infected while they sleep. George Romero has cited the novel and this adaptation as an influence on Night of the Living Dead, made a few years later, and it is worth watching the two together to see how the same premise, one immune survivor against a city of the transformed, was reworked into a different kind of horror film.
