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Overview
Normally you wouldn’t see a Vincent Price movie on the Horror Lasagna podcast? Why? Because everyone knows him, he’s popular. We tend to look for more obscure movies to talk about and recommend. But this one kinda fits.
It’s an early VP movie that happens to be in the public domain. It’s one you might not have seen – and that’s good enough for us. It’s one of several based on the Richard Matheson book “I am Legend”. It holds an interesting place in our horror movie history, so its a recommended watch.
Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_on_Earth_(1964_film)
IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058700/
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https://archive.org/details/lastmanonearth-1964
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Transcript
Stephen: everybody, welcome to another one of our side dishes. This time we’re talking about Last Man on Earth, which is a fairly new movie for a public domain.
Rhys: It’s true. It seems to me as I was leafing through this, that again, not unlike, I can’t remember which one it was, but there was a clerical error that pushed this into the public domain. It wasn’t necessarily time passing or anything like that. It was just, oops, someone didn’t file something.
And here we go. This is based on a,
Stephen: what happens,
Rhys: yeah, this is based on a novel but Richard Math.
Stephen: A very popular one. There’s been version of the movie.
Rhys: I was gonna say with the title, you’ll probably know from another movie called I Am Legend.
Stephen: I’m legend with Will Smith and this one, they both must follow the book. I haven’t, of course, I may have read the story. I don’t remember reading the story, but they must follow it pretty [00:01:00] close because both movies are very similar story-wise.
Rhys: Yeah, people have said that the last man on Earth falls closer than any other of the movies. ’cause Omega, the Omega man was based on the same novel. So they say that the last man on earth follows it more closely, and that’s probably because Matheson, the author of the book, was also the screenwriter for this, although at the.
He didn’t like the final product enough that he made them change his name on the credits to, I can’t remember what it was. It was like his wife’s mom’s, his wife’s maiden name and his mom’s maiden name, or something like that. Because if he didn’t have any name on the credits, he wouldn’t get any residuals,
Yeah.
Stephen: I’m gonna use a pseudonym.
Rhys: Yes, exactly. I’m gonna, I’m gonna register this one. It stars the ridiculously talented and long noted horror star Vincent Price.
Stephen: Yes, and he, [00:02:00] it’s a slightly different role. He is pretty young. He almost looks like some Italian conquistador or something in this one.
Rhys: Funny you mentioned Italy. It was filmed in Italy. The cast and crew were Italian, aside from Vincent Price. In fact the. Voiceover work that’s done here. Vincent Price is the only one who’s using his actual voice. Everybody else was overdubbed by English speaking actors or actresses
Stephen: So we have an English dubbed the movie. Didn’t even know it.
Rhys: yes. Yeah. But I just, if I’ve always been a fan of Vincent Price. I, if you go back to 1959 with House on Haunted Hill, I own that. I own that on DVD and I loved that movie. And a lot of times, especially in his later films he started to get campy, but I think he works really well in black and white.
Stephen: Yeah, and I even noticed, [00:03:00] I was like, how clear and crisp the the black and white movie was? We get a lot of movies that are fuzzy or, they, they show, they look like someone. Recorded on VHS from the seventies.
Rhys: It’s really funny ’cause there’s actually a scene because everything is shot so well. There’s a scene where the camera’s slightly out of focus and it’s a shot where the doctor is talking to Ruth and so they’re bouncing back and forth from each of them, like a bust shot. And she is like crisp and clear and.
Vincent Price is like slightly out of focus and you can really notice it because of how tightly in focus she is.
Stephen: It’s like the old ones when they show the light and the women in the mood music, and then they get that light right across their eyes. The highlight, it’s
Rhys: yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things that this does one of the reasons this stands out as a better adaptation of Matheson’s [00:04:00] novel than I am legend, is that at the end of I am legend, the girl leaves and goes to the place that she came from and everyone’s oh and the doctor, will Smith, he sacrifices himself for the good of humanity.
In this one and in the novel, the humanity that’s left isn’t very good. And in the book. Robert Morgan is taken captive by them, and he’s to be made a public execution of, they’re gonna take him out in front of everybody and kill him because he has become a legend himself. He has supplanted like the legend of the vampire with the legend of this guy.
So he Ruth slips him some cyanide pills or something and he takes them and dies. The society that’s left is very bleak, and you don’t get that in the will legend. You just have, hey, you knows on,
Stephen: and it’s [00:05:00] funny you say that too, because they seem zombies more than anything mindless but able to talk. And they don’t really even mention vampire till way halfway through. A little over halfway through or so. And the I am legend with Will Smith. It is very much a modern almost action horror movie.
So the ending they put in there fit very well with that dramatic popcorn action. The change, this one is much more of a slow burn. It’s an hour of just watching Vincent Price go about his day, kind of Mac Cobb, where he is picking up dead bodies and burning them and stuff.
But it’s like a day in the life
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: ated planet earth.
Rhys: Romero does cite this as a massive influence on night living. Dead
Stephen: I can see that.
Rhys: The look of it and the tone and the way, the creatures looked. He was like, yeah I wrote a book and basically ripped off Matheson’s. I am legend.
Stephen: Oh how many horror people can’t say they didn’t rip Matheson off in some way at some point.[00:06:00]
Rhys: absolutely. One of the things like this is like the awesome thing about Vincent Price. He wanted to be super authentic. So when he’s loading bodies into and out of his car, those are actually actors because he didn’t want it to seem like he was just tossing people around. He wanted to show how much effort it goes into moving a body, and that’s also why he was very gentle about it.
He them in there.
Stephen: I assume it wasn’t real bodies tossing into the fire. And I do, I even put a note on this and question like, okay, so he’s saying it’s been three years. All the gasoline still is good. That’s interesting. And hey, look the garlic is sitting here and still boating. That’s interesting.
After three years sitting here, garlic, maybe it dries out. That might, but, and I would like to note, I have heard that besides keeping vampires away, garlic is really good to cover up the smell of alcohol, especially whiskey on your breath. I’ve heard that
Rhys: Good to know.
Stephen: You know who told me that?
Rhys: [00:07:00] I’m almost afraid to ask.
Stephen: You did when we were like 12.
Rhys: Oh, all good deal.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: One of the things that I loved about this movie, so there were like two parts to this movie that really stood out to me. One, after he buries his wife and he’s in the house by himself and you hear her calling from outside, genuinely creepy scene.
Stephen: Yes.
Rhys: I was like, wow. Wow. No wait. That’s really actually scary.
Stephen: And I’d like to point out the music fit very well with all the scenes, and we always say how music helps set that mood
Rhys: And this was back in the era when, music was not, some guy with the synthesizer music was an orchestra and there was, you had all of the pieces there. The other part that really got me was when Ruth is talking to him and she’s no, you are a legend of terror to us. She walk around during the day and you just walk into our houses and kill people.
And I was like. Oh my God. [00:08:00] These people were actually conscious, sentient. They weren’t the living dead, they were just people who were sleeping during the day and laughter them.
Stephen: It’s all perspective, right?
Eons. You got Neanderthals and the homosapiens sapiens rising up. How’s that much different than suddenly a group of homo sapiens running after Neanderthals and killing them off? From our perspective it’s of course we had to do that. It was good for us. If 300 years, 500, a thousand years from now, everybody’s a vampire.
That’s what the world has always been as far as they know that it’s these horrific stories of these, oh my God, the human homans homo sapiens would just murder us in our beds. That’s horrible. It, the winners write the history.
Rhys: Yeah, and the analogy of the, here we have something that can actually solve society’s woes. We’re [00:09:00] frightened of it, so we’re going to kill. It is heavy handed here. I don’t wanna say it’s heavy handed. It’s actually handled pretty well, but it’s certainly not lost on the viewer.
Stephen: Yeah. But again, from a certain perspective, is it saving humanity? Not from the vampire’s perspective, from their perspective, we’re fine,
Rhys: yeah, no, I just mean like from those who were infected but hadn’t turned, he had the ability to actually give them antigen, so they didn’t need to take medicine or anything. They would be cured. However, only one person knew that because the rest of them were scared of the fact that he was different and he had been killing them.
So he
Stephen: absolutely a and like you said, the analogy in today’s world, sticks, it’s not like things have changed.
Rhys: Yes, it’s a, it’s still a common problem, so
Stephen: That’s I dunno. Any last words before the vampire’s kitchen?
Rhys: not really. So like you look into the cast and everything. You don’t know anything they’ve been in, [00:10:00] because most of ’em are Italian. Even Omo Stewart who played Ben, his friend, like he was in the Godfather in an uncredited role. But everything else he has on there is Italian films or the kind of thing.
Spaghetti westerns, they used to shoot in Italy a lot. So you know, it’s notuncommon, but
Stephen: I would will say, if anyone has seen I am legend, which I’m sure lots of people wa, that our horror fans have if you now say I think I’ll go watch that they’re tone wise, they’re way different. This is very sedate. There’s not action per se. Even the fights are fairly laughable
Rhys: The last chase scene is,
Stephen: yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: as you’re gonna to action, but it looks Benny Hill as to.
Stephen: It’s a typical, I’m running away, but I have to stop and shoot five times and then run away some more. I’m like, just keep running.
Rhys: I’m gonna open the weapons cabinet and ignore all of the fully automatic weapons and take tear gas canisters. Which,[00:11:00]
Stephen: And he throws him outside. That’s not doing a heck of a whole lot there. I also love the,
Rhys: it, Jim, he’s a doctor, not a warrior.
Stephen: That’s true. I love the, that’s good. I love the Armory. And you go in and there’s one small cabinet with four guns. I thought that was funny too. Forget the tone wise, like a lot of the old movies, maybe they don’t hold up with all of that type of thing.
It was a different era. It was a
Rhys: Oh, for sure.
Stephen: culture. It was a different filming culture, so this is what you get. Anything we got now in 50, 70 years is going to be a little bit laughable, I’m sure. Even though it looks like so cool. Even Rambo does not look as cool as it did when I was 15,
Rhys: yeah, and the, our side dishes are, usually they’re served up with a good dose of cinema history. If you’re a C of vile and you’re into horror movies, then you know, all of these titles that we’ve showed so far have been significant culturally in the growth of the mediums, though.
Stephen: Yeah, which also is a slight problem in that once we get through the biggest ones, now we’re gonna have to find [00:12:00] some stuff that maybe not as good. So we’ll see what happens with the list as we continue
Rhys: What’s next on the list, Steve?
Stephen: freaking out. And it’s funny, I looked it up this time. I have it already Diabolique, which I don’t know anything about.
I haven’t seen, but I have heard it’s maybe not quite as much of a horror. So we’ll see.
Rhys: So you haven’t seen the remake?
Stephen: I have not seen anything with this. No.
Rhys: Wow. Okay. Okay.
Stephen: I, between this and season five, I’ve got a couple more remakes, American remakes I gotta go watch, so I can compare. I’m falling behind on that. It doesn’t help that it’s summer, but yeah, I like to do that and watch the versions and compare a bit now
Rhys: this is a good one. I will just. I don’t wanna say forewarning, but just point out this is gonna be much more of a Hitchcockian type situation than, a universal monster movie.
Stephen: Yeah. That I didn’t understand and realize can’t be worse than Atomic [00:13:00] Age vampire. That, that, that’s my example. We saw that one as a group some people once and it was like, wow, atomic Age vampire. That sounds cool. It was about this girl who had plastic surgery and it was like, oh, are you kidding me?
That’s whole nother discussion. Alright man, Vincent Price, last man standing. Everybody go check it out
Rhys: Yeah, it’s a good one.
Stephen: later.
Rhys: See you.
