The Last Man on Earth (1964)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Ubaldo Ragona

Writers:

Richard Matheson (novel) and
William F. Leicester (writer)

Release Date:

8 March 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi | Drama

Tagline:

By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!

Plot:

Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a devastating world-wide plague due to a mysterious...

Plot Keywords:

Plague | Night | Survivor | Charnel Pit | Transfusion

Cast

Vincent Price	...	Dr. Robert Morgan
Franca Bettoia	...	Ruth Collins
Emma Danieli	...	Virginia Morgan
Giacomo Rossi-Stuart	...	Ben Cortman
Umberto Raho	...	Dr. Mercer
Christi Courtland	...	Kathy Morgan
Antonio Corevi	...	Governor (as Tony Corevi)
Ettore Ribotta	...	TV Reporter (as Hector Ribotta)
Rolando De Rossi

Also Known As:

L'ultimo uomo della terra (Italy) (dubbed version)
Naked Terror
Night People
The Night Creatures
Vento di morte
Wind of Death

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA | Italy

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG (2007) | UK:X (1966) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Australia:PG | Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

E.U.R., Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Associated Producers (API)

Trivia:

Richard Matheson felt Vincent Price was miscast as Robert Morgan.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: At the beginning, when Morgan goes out searching for corpses to incinerate, after he puts a man and a woman into the back of his car, it is possible to see the two actors moving themselves to settle down in the back of the car.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Robert Morgan: Another day to live through. Better get started.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Silent Hill (2006)

Seems like a great film ...but for all the wrong reasons?

I like this film, and definitely associate it with my childhood, via the inside cover of an old issue of Famous Monsters that pictured a vampire arm groping around the door for Vincent Price. I gazed at that photo as the magazine wore out, for years before I actually got to see the film.

Vincent Price is always good to see. But as he is not a terribly physical actor, he looks awkward doing some of the things he is called on to do here, like dragging a body to the edge of a pit and heaving it in, pounding a stake into a vampire heart, or hurling a mirror across the room in disgust and despair. Not standing about with cocktail in hand, dressed to the nines and oozing wicked sophistication, he looks about as out of place as Cary Grant would setting a trash can out at the curb.

I ask, in the title of this review, if we like this film "for all the wrong reasons" because, inescapably, I find it pitched at a sort of self-pity, tapping into the allure of images of yourself alone at the center of the human universe, of satisfied contemplation of the stupid folly of Man the Scientist, the Politician, the Warrior, that will bring the end of his own species. --In a word, it seems to inhabit a place that is the near-exclusive province of the truly isolated, disaffected and fantasy-prone adolescent.

Being aware of this demographic skew doesn't invalidate the real and strong emotional place the film creates and enables anybody else to inhabit. But I do wonder about the effusive, near-idolatrous over-analysis this film has been known to elicit. I think it would be a pity if, through the growing cult of this film, we come to be less moved by horror --the whole precept on which Matheson's novel and the film are based-- than seduced by the film's image of post-apocalyptic solitude, which can lapse into full-blown gloating misanthropy with just a slight nudge.

I find Last Man oppressively tragic and sobering and depressing-- and always, always utterly absorbing. Even tenth time watched, it feels like you are watching your own funeral, listening to nothing less than taps being sounded for your own species. This is, not to be too glib, the films greatest strength AND weakness.