Heston’s foes, by contrast are, if not much faster, then certainly chattier, with the leader of “The Family” a much more sophisticated creature than just a ghoul, even staging a mock trial at one point. The films differ most notably in the portrayal of the mutants: Vincent Price battles what we have to call “zompires” combining elements of zombiedom (shuffling walk, rising from the dead, being kinda stupid and almost mute) with vampirism (aversion to mirrors, garlic, sunlight, need to be killed by a stake through the heart). Having seen everyone he knows die (or having had to kill the mutants they turned into), the scientist roams the deserted city alone by day (the mutants can’t abide sunshine), and hunts or hides by night, in a lonesome and monotonous existence until he discovers that not only may other people be alive and uninfected, he may have the key to a curative serum. They all share the bones of the story: a plague of some sort has wiped out most of humanity, and those it hasn’t wiped out have turned into fearsome mutants - all except one man, a scientist who alone has some sort of immunity to the disease. Indeed the first screen version is actually called “ The Last Man On Earth,” filmed in 1964, starring Vincent Price, and it’s a really quite terrific black-and-white B-movie from that era, that would be followed by the pretty-decent Charlton Heston-starrer “ The Omega Man” in 1971, and then the promising but ultimately disappointing “ I Am Legend” starring Will Smith in 2007. Having been adapted three times (not including 2007’s DTV version), in three different eras, author Richard Matheson‘s story “ I Am Legend” could be considered the Grandaddy, Daddy (and, um, cool elder brother?) of all “last man on earth” movies.
While the line between the straight-up post-apocalyptic movie and the “last man on earth” sub-genre can be hard to discern, these are the films we think walk the right side of that division, and are the ones we’d loot a deserted video store to search out, before driving off in our stolen Ferrari, to watch them in our empty silent penthouse apartment. These are the films we chose, movies in which an individual (or a small group) faces off against the great unknown, usually following some kind of cataclysmic event. In something of the spirit of the lone, lonely survivor who wants to collect around him his favorite things, we’ve foregone the apocalyptic event and started a small collection of our own - our favorite “last man on earth” movies. (Short version: moon was destroyed by alien somethings shit got fucked up.) Sure, this is a post-apocalyptic vision (one soundtracked by a propulsive M83 score), but it also falls into the more niche category of the “last man on earth” sub-genre, one that will quickly get another entry in the form of Will Smith‘s “ After Earth” (opening later this summer). In this weekend’s slick, sleekly-realized “ Oblivion,” Tom Cruise stars as a technician in charge of a decayed radioactive wasteland version of Earth.