Format: Streaming video from FreeVee on Fire!
Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend” has been adapted to film three times. The latest time was called I am Legend and was a massive blockbuster featuring Will Smith. Before that was The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. The first version was The Last Man on Earth from 1964, featuring Vincent Price. In my opinion, the adaptations have gotten steadily worse; The Last Man on Earth is not only the best of the three adaptations, it’s in many ways the one most loyal to the novel, in no small part because the screenplay was co-written by Matheson himself, even if he was disappointed enough in the result to asked to be listed under a different name.
In 1968, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) lives by himself in the ruins of a city devastated by a terrible plague. We learn through a series of extended flashbacks that Morgan was a scientist working on finding a cure for a bacterial plague that has wiped out the planet’s population. However, he is not entirely alone, as it were. Those who have died of the plague have returned, and while physically and mentally weak, the bear all of the other classic hallmarks of vampires. They avoid their own reflection in mirrors, are repelled by garlic, and heal from wounds quickly, forcing Morgan to kill them by staking them. Because there are things that need to be discussed in detail, consider the rest of this under a spoiler warning—this movie is 60 years old, but that doesn’t change the fact that you may not want it spoiled.
