The Last Man on Earth (1964)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Last Man on Earth (1964) – U. Ragona & S. Salkow

Vincent Price stars as the last lonely man in a world that has quickly succumbed to an airborne virus that turns everyone else into a zombie-vampire. (Yes, helluva time to watch this one!).  This was a forerunner to Night of the Living Dead (1968) and shot in the same ultra-low-budget style (although there should be some fancy blu-ray copies available now, not like the dingy public domain version I watched. The screenplay is by Richard Matheson from his novella “I am Legend” (later remade as The Omega Man and also with Will Smith).  Despite (or perhaps because of) the cheapness of the proceedings, this is something of a masterwork of Existential Dread:  Price reflects on the drudgery of a meaningless life with all loved ones gone (seen only in a very sad flashback) and the same dire routine day-after-day (making wooden stakes to kill zombie-vampires is much like factory work, after all).  By day, he scours his city (apparently Rome!) looking for sleeping z-v’s but at night he is locked up in his house with the ghouls smashing at the doors and windows (but either too dumb to get in or warded off by garlic and mirrors).  Then one day, he meets another “survivor” and his hopes are raised (as an epidemiologist/virologist himself, he also has been working on a vaccine).  But this is not a film to raise your spirits – it’s horror American International Pictures style.