You can see what attracted Charlton Heston to this Richard Matheson novel (filmed with Vincent Price as LAST MAN ON EARTH/’64*; again with Will Smith under original title I AM LEGEND/’07). Its post-plague dystopian Earth lets Heston repeat his Last Man Standing from PLANET OF THE APES/’68, here a vaccine-hunting scientist; a mutant race give chase like the Apes in APES; a commune of mildly infected survivors need rescuing like APES’ slaves; even a ‘wild girl’ for a roll in the hay. And mirroring the timeless rural East Coast of APES; near-future urban West Coast. But what chance does this have to work when every element has been downgraded: director, script, cast, score, lensing, budget, even the mutant makeup disappoints. (Those Ape prosthetics look primitive now, but at the time they were startling enough to win a LIFE Magazine cover.) Zoom-happy tv director Boris Sagal seems unable to shake cinematographer Russell Metty into his former talented self, so we’re stuck with crappy ‘60s Universal house-style even though it’s a Warners film. The Ron Rainer score might work better as a cut on a Tijuana Brass L.P. Lead villain Anthony Zerbe has a Peter Sellers vibe, and a ‘daring’ interracial smooch between Chuck & Rosalind Cash proves less interesting than her remarkable Afro. One of those don’t sit behind her classics. All while consumerism runs amuck in a deserted downtown that’s well stocked with everything except irony. A real missed opportunity for satire or drama. A sentiment that, judging by his own published diaries (READ ALL ABOUT IT: THE ACTOR’S LIFE), Heston would have seconded.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Many people like the Vincent Price version. Here, not so much. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/08/last-man-on-earth-1964.html
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