Rating: 3/5
Hoop-Tober | 6/31 | Decades 6/10 | 60s
Bodies litter the city streets. A church sign reads, “The End Has Come.” An alarm awakens Dr. Robert Morgan, the last living man on earth. The walls mark the calendar days since the end began three years ago. A ring of garlic cloves and a broken mirror adorn the exterior door.
Outside, Morgan kicks over the bodies that lay in his yard — victims of the disease that has taken over the world. Still, Morgan has not given up his search for any other survivors. He prepares a bag of sharpened stakes to protect himself before hitting the road and continuing his slow canvasing of the city.
This film is the first adaptation of Matheson’s I Am Legend. The book also influenced Night of the Living Dead a few years later. The diseased, while vampires in spirit, behave much closer to Romero’s zombies—slow, ambling creatures with violent urges.
Like the novel, the film explores hubris and the ill-fated notion of heroic individualism. Morgan blames himself for ignoring the tell-tale signs of the impending disease and seeks to make things right. Unlike the novel, the film diverges in the fallout of Morgan’s choices — I won’t say more and risk spoiling it.
I imagine this will be boring for many people — you know where it’s going, and it doesn’t get there fast. Still, I could watch a movie of Vincent Price eating a sandwich, so that was never a concern of mine.
Though I Am Legend would be adapted several more times, this version likely remains the most faithful and well-realized.