Being
the introvert I am, my first instinctive thought was how great would that
be. Peace and quiet. No damn motorcycles driving by my apartment at full
throttle at 2am. No neighbor renovating his frigging condo for two months.
Sure, there would be some downsides. I might have to learn how to cook. No
season four of The Mandalorian. But I could finally catch up on the hundreds
of unread books on my Kindle - as long as the electricity continued of course.
And thousands of films. But to be all alone. Unfortunately, the protagonist
of this film isn't alone. Yes, the last man - but there are others. This
is based on I am Legend by Richard Matheson - the same as The Omega Man -
and it plays out much the same except with a much smaller budget. It is an
American-Italian co-production with nearly all Italians behind the camera
and nearly all the actors also Italian. It was filmed in Rome.
A plague has killed off the human race with
only one exception who is immune. But it turns the dead into a mixture of
vampires and zombies - vombies I guess. Our own plague only turned people
into idiots. But I suspect they always were. Now Florida not mandating vaccines
for children going to school - yay Polio! The one man is Dr. Morgan played
with real pathos by Vincent Price. He has a daily routine - sharpen his stakes,
get fresh garlic, buy new mirrors for the ones smashed the night before,
fill up on gas, burn the dead bodies scattered all over and go looking for
the creatures during the day and stake them. It is a full day but after three
years it is beginning to wear on him. Still falling asleep outside in the
day and waking up at night is a big no-no.
These creatures don't have much zip and
no bite. Not really sure what they do other than bang on his house all night
long. They want to kill him, but why? Do they eat flesh? If so, they must
be getting hungry as there are no more treats. One of the creatures is an
old friend who keeps calling his name out - Morgan, Morgan - like The Warriors.
Come out Morgan. Not sure why he has chosen to live in a shithole house.
You have your pick of every place in the world. I would be staying at the
penthouse in the Ritz; turn off the elevators and hope they can't walk up
20-floors of steps. This film is very effective - in a flashback we see him
with his loving family who get sick and die. The scene where he buries his
wife way out in the countryside and she knocks on his door is wonderful.
Did she take a cab? It never lets up or lightens up - deeply depressing and
an influential film for others that came afterwards. A bit more of a budget
would have gone a long ways. Interestingly, Hammer bought the rights
to the book in the late 1950s - you can imagine Peter Cushing in the role
- but apparently the British censors were like no way - ad they sold it to
American Robert Lippert who had helped finance Hammer on many of their early
films. But not to say that Price is not great. He is.
