The Last Woman on Earth

An excellent premise squandered on a mediocre, unimaginative would-be drama, or film school according to Roger Corman in practice. When the master of trash became aware of incentives in Puerto Rico, he immediately churned out three films at once with the same cast and crew. Of this trio, which also includes Creature from the Haunted Sea and Battle of Blood Island, The Last Woman on Earth is the most economical project, as it gets by with three characters and zero extra costs (among other things, it was filmed in the bungalow rented as housing for the crew). The premise, in which an unscrupulous gambler, his wife and his lawyer go scuba diving and, when they emerge, find that oxygen has disappeared from the air, killing everyone but them, first offers a handful of phenomenally absurd scenes and twists, but then settles into an average and predictable would-be drama about infidelity and trust among the last people in the world. The screenwriter, who would later pen Chinatown and The Firm, tries in vain to breathe some life into this dime-store flick with some stimulating ideas, but Corman doesn’t let that distract him from the goal of shooting a bit of consumer-grade drive-in bullshit for little money. (06/26/2016)

There’s a simple plot premise (written by the Oscar-winning Robert Towne), from which more could have been extracted. The Quiet Earth, for example, was based on a similar idea and handled it way better. The acting performance is poor albeit standard for an early Corman production (the only interesting feature is probably the role of the above-mentioned Robert Towne). On the other hand, we can’t deny the beautifully rendered postapocalyptic atmosphere and the effort to convey a message. I was expecting something worse; finally, I see it as a bearable average. (05/31/2018)