The Last Man on Earth

With a bit of exaggeration, it’s sort of thematically related to Will Smith’s hit I, Legend. The post-apocalyptic atmosphere of the first 20 minutes is excellent. There’s no need for stacked clusters of extras and panoramic scenes, just a few deserted streets, garbage on the ground, a few dead bodies by the roadside and the ominous smoke from the pit where the main character cremates the infected corpses. The concept of zombies, or rather infected ones, is somewhat strange: they resemble drunkards on their way back home from a bender, even after three years since the infection they still walk around in fairly clean and undamaged clothes, they hate garlic, mirrors and daylight, they call the main character by his name and they use tools. The flashback, which illustrates and explains the plot, is rather brief, so that the weight of the moment when the pandemic breaks out fails to reach you. The final ten-minute action set-piece is unintentionally funny, unfortunately. Of course, there's the charismatic Vincent Price, who bravely carries everything his shoulders, he could sell the biggest crap. (01/04/2014)

A very good post-apocalyptic horror film from the 1960s. If you ignore that big dose of naivete (something that unfortunately is characteristic of the old films of the genre), you will have at least some decent fun, and if you don’t want to ignore it, you’ll at least have a good laugh (in the first act, when Vincent Price is constantly making dramatic gestures with a pained expression and through a voiceover shares his current state of mind with the viewer, I was almost laughing). But the remaining two acts are much better. What I liked the most was the important final twist (which basically explains the title of the book), which I think wasn’t in the newer adaptation (I’m not sure, I don’t remember it very well). (08/29/2011)

The atmosphere of the deserted town is very believable, Vincent Price makes wooden pins on a lathe, gathers garlic, ties it into wreaths and hangs them on the door of his house, around which he continuously collects corpses, which he takes out of town and burns in a big pit, and when at night "vampire zombies" bang on the windows and doors, he puts on his record player, stretches out on the couch and tries not to think about them and sleep... A great start. And the rest of The Last Man on Earth was no worse. The flashback set before the contagion was bleak and dramatic, and the final third was stunningly cold. I managed to rise above the slightly naive concept of the story... And I didn't compare it to the newer version. (03/24/2012)