The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Director: Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow

Writer: Richard Matheson, William F. Leicester, Richard Matheson, Furio M. Monetti, Ubaldo Ragona

Tagline: Do you dare to imagine what it would be like to be... the last man on earth... or the last woman?

Actors: Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Umberto Raho, Christi Courtland

Runtime: 1h 26m

Category: Book Adaptation, Outbreak, Zombie

Synopsis: Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the last man alive after a world wide plague has wiped mankind off of the planet. By day he travels the streets killing all of the undead that walk at night. He hunts them down and then when he kills them he burns the bodies to stop the spread of infection. By night he camps out in his home that he has made a fortress out of and hopes to live to hunt another day.

Review: Love VP and loved this movie. It never seems to lose its pungency like the garlic VP uses in the movie. I still feel that some films are better in B & W and this is one of them. Had this been colorized I don’t think this would have been as effective. I think there are only a handful of actors in film history that could be only character in a movie and carry it for the entire length. My man Vincent Price is one of them. Dingle berry Tom Hanks is not. The concept is simple, the story even simpler, kill or be killed. It is the oldest tale; survival of the fittest. Who better to show us how it is done than the master of all things horror…VP. There is nothing at all flashy about this one, just a good old fashioned zombie flick.

Rating: 22 out of 25. It’s just one guy fighting an urban area flooded with zombies. How big are his wheybos! I give props to the classics that made this sub-genre explode over the last fourty-three years. It has helped spawn the Romero movies (Night, Dawn, Day, Land, and Diary of the Dead), it has paved the way for movies like Shaun of the Dead (2004), Dead & Breakfast (2004), Undead (2005), and Zombie Honeymoon (2004), all of which you can read about here except for Zombie Honeymoon (2004). So far our wives haven’t ok’d the movie for review. Cheers Vincent on another Masterpiece! (22of25).