1960s SF film
The Last Man on Earth, 1964, Italy DIRECTED BY UBALDO RAGONA
Richard Matheson didn't much care for this, the first film version of his novel I Am Legend. He scripted it under his own name, but being rather dissatisfied with the result and the changes made to it he removed his name and appears instead as 'Logan Swanson'. Set in Los Angeles but filmed in Rome, an unnamed plague has swept the world and Robert Morgan, a scientist, turns out to be the only unaffected survivor, possibly because he was once bitten by a bat infected with the plague germ and his immune system developed the right antibodies. By night he barricades himself indoors at home but by day he becomes vampire hunter, killing the plague victims with a stake through the heart before their infections transform them. It's unfortunate that the vampires of this film are more like brain-dead zombies than the quick antagonists of the novel, and their slowness in turn deadens the film dramatically, at least until the build up to the final confrontation in the church. Otherwise, it's fairly faithful to the novel with an atmosphere and setting that is often admirably Bava-esque, and while Vincent Price gives a fairly restrained performance - and there really is not much else you can say about it - for most of the first half of the movie the direction is unimaginative and the build-up too slow, often relying heavily on Price's voiceover to put across any sense of drama. This was never a great film, and it's more well known now for its influence on George Romero when he ripped it off to create Night of the Living Dead. But yeah, the dog scenes are still dead cute.