The Last Man on Earth (1964 film)

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The Last Man on Earth (1964), AKA I Am Legend, The Damned Walk at Midnight, and The Naked Terror; the movie was later remade as The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007)

Summary

"Alive among the lifeless... alone among the crawling creatures of evil that make the night hideous with their inhuman craving! By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!" When a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.

Details

Promotional image for The Last Man on Earth (1964 film)...

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

  • Rated: not rated (perhaps a PG for Violence and mild Profanity)

The movie somehow earned an X rating in the UK in its day, but has aired with minimal editing as the equivalent of a 1970s or 1980s "G", and would be the sort of horror movie I watched all the time as a kid without thinking of it.

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

  • S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)

Though not explicitly Lovecraftian, the bleak updated post-apocalyptic Gothic setting with the last human in a world inherited by ghoulish monsters would surely fit right in alongside Lovecraft's vision, and might be taken as a sort of early [{Cthulhu End Times]] story.

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

  • Discussion/Review by the Orphaned Entertainment Podcast (link)
  • Review by David Becker at 2,500 Movies Challenge (link)
  • Review by Richard Cross at 20/20 Movie Reviews (link)
  • Review by Jerry Renshaw at the Austin Chronicle (link)
  • Review by Richard Schieb at The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review (link) - (2.5/5 Stars) "The Last Man on Earth has some occasional moments of interest, certainly more than it has been credited for."


Synopsis (SPOILERS)

 Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)

Vincent Price stars as Dr. Robert Morgan, the titular last man on Earth, who was bitten by a vampire bat at some point in the past and developed an immunity to the so-called "European Disease" sweeping the world: vampirism, which has rendered humanity extinct, and left the streets filled with the starving living dead. Morgan's sanity has begun to slowly erode between the isolation and loneliness, and the nightly siege of his home by bands of ghouls who beat on his door and taunt him while he tries to drown out the horror with alcohol and loud jazz music. By day, Morgan drives the deserted city streets in a hearse, armed with garlic and stakes, searching for the hiding places of the ghouls, until one day he encounters what seem to be other human beings, who try to flee, but, left with little choice, meet Morgan and speak with him. Morgan soon discovers that the people he has met are actually evolved vampires, who have raised up their own, peace-loving civilization, which tells horror stories by night about the legend of the last man on earth, a monster who kills harmless vampires in their sleep. Morgan realizes his error, and then finds his blood can cure vampirism, but it's all too late: death squads of the living dead hunt him down and kill him, destroying the cure for vampirism at the same time, ending the movie on a bleak and hopeless note....


Notes

Comments, Trivia, Dedication

Associated Mythos Elements


Keeper Notes


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