Hacker Cinema
The Last Man on Earth
1964 · Film · 87 min
Directed by Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow
When a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.
2 positive3 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
I Am Legend has been made into a film at least 3 different times. It’s influenced a lot of people even if they never read the book.
EDIT: The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007), 28 Days Later (2002)…
My favorite is 28 Days Later
> things you can binge watch for a month?
this should get you through March :) ...
The Seventh Seal (1957) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/
The Last Man on Earth (1964) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058700/
The Omega Man (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/
The Andromeda Strain (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/
Dawn of the Dead (1978) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/
Outbreak (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/
12 Monkeys (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/
Cabin Fever (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303816/
Resident Evil (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/
28 Days Later (2003) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
Children of Men (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/
28 Weeks Later (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/
I Am Legend (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/
Blindness (2008) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861689/
Carriers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0806203/
Daybreakers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433362/
Black Death (2010) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181791/
Contagion (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4500922/
World War Z (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/
Maggie (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1881002/
Train to Busan (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5700672/
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/
93 Days (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5305246/
Cargo (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3860916/
It Comes At Night (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4695012/
Rabid (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5628902/
The Hot Zone (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4131818/
edit: There is actually a Wikipedia page for the genre (duh!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_viral_outbreaks
They also have The Last Man On Earth (1964) http://publicdomainflix.com/mobile/the-last-man-on-earth-1964_a71c469fb.html
It's the first movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend."
It was filmed in the suburbs of Rome, Italy.
It was fantastic up until the vampires/zombies turned into cartoons. One of the scariest scenes I've ever seen was the bit where he goes in after the dog and the vamps are all huddled in a circle shivering in the dark. That was some top notch creepy. And it was brilliant acting by Smith (so much of the scariness of that scene was just because the character was scared).
But, then we got a closer look at them a bit later and they were flying through the air, bouncing off the walls, and just all around looking like cartoon monsters. I'm just not frightened by cartoons. And, it really killed the slow, calm, horror of the book for me. The things that made the book unique and scary in a way that sticks with you are just fundamentally different from the jump scares of the film.
The Vincent Price adaptation (The Last Man On Earth) remains the most faithful film version of I Am Legend, in spirit if not in specific detail. I don't really mind when a movie script changes some plot points or some character details to make it work on screen, I just dislike it when the spirit of the thing is thrown away and replaced with blockbuster tropes (which is my primary complaint about I, Robot, as well).
But, again, I thought Will Smith was excellent in the role. I just really hate what they did with the vamps.
I haven't read the novel or seen the comparatively recent film yet, but I saw both of the other film adaptations of the novel (The Last Man On Earth starring Vincent Price and The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston) and there may indeed be some parallels with how the eponymous man in either of those films views the strange, apparently subhuman creatures who roam the streets in the night. As other comments in this thread have noted, many indigenous people didn't recognize outsiders as quite human upon initial contact.
This is all very speculative, though.