Monsters and Matinees: A trio of films bring to life Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend’

A trio of films bring to life Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend’

The idea of the last man or woman on earth spurs my imagination.

How will it happen? When will it happen? Why will it happen?

“Germs. Bacteria. Viruses. Vampires.”

That’s author Richard Matheson’s excellent answer to the “why” in I Am Legend, his post-apocalyptic novella set in a world decimated by a mysterious virus. The already intriguing subject is made even better with Matheson’s addition of my favorite creature – the vampire.

Since it was published nearly 70 years ago, his novella has been the source material for three films: The Last Man on Earth (filmed in Rome in 1964 as L’ultimo uomo della Terra) starring Vincent Price, The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (2007) starring Will Smith. (Yes, that’s a much newer film than we write about in Monsters and Matinees, but it’s important to include here.)

Matheson wrote I Am Legend in 1954 and set it in January of 1976, five months into a mysterious illness.

Robert Neville is a 36-year-old researcher who has immunity to whatever is causing a pandemic that has wiped out the world, turning the few survivors into vampires.

Through Robert’s first-person account we learn about the “before days” and his happy life with his wife and young daughter, the early signs of a disease spreading wildly overseas and worries of whether it can get to the United States. A newspaper headline asks “Is Europe’s disease carried on the wind?” Yes, it is.

The story – and movies – will jump between those terrifying early days as frightened people succumb to the disease and Robert’s current life battling the nightly vampire attacks and his own demons.

He turns his home into a mini fortress with slats over windows and garlic and mirrors at the doors to ward off the vampires. One room “belongs to his stomach,” filled with canned goods and the like. By day, he hunts the creatures while loading up on gas and supplies. He harvests garlic from his hothouse, creating an overwhelming and sickening stench. At night, Robert eats, drinks heavily and plays his records to drown out the taunting cries from the undead.

He reads Dracula and muses philosophically about vampires (during the early days, there were reports of vampires that many, including Robert, scoffed at believing) and continues to valiantly search for a cure. And he inexorably talks about the passage of time, watching the minutes slowly pass by.

It’s surprisingly sad to watch.

“A man could get used to anything if he had to,” Robert says, but who is he kidding? Not us.

Of course he hopes to find other survivors, but, like most post-apocalyptic thrillers with a last-person/people-on-earth theme, it’s not all good when he finds them.

The movies

That’s the basic plot of the story that’s followed at least loosely in the films: Something wipes out most of humanity leaving the few survivors as vampires/killers/mutants except for one man who has immunity and fights for his survival and a cure. If that intrigues you, I highly recommend the movies even knowing that Matheson wasn’t particularly happy with them because, well to be honest, I really get into them.

You don’t need to watch them in any order; pick your favorite actor of the three if you like and start watching.

Each film is set in the time it was made (The Omega Man is very much a film of the ‘70s in style and music) and has a different explanation on what caused the virus (bacterial plague, biological warfare etc.).

The three versions of Robert are similar in that they are intelligent men with backgrounds in research, science and the military which provide them the unique skill sets to survive. Otherwise the actors give him a different personality: Price brings a weariness and pitifulness to his character (renamed Robert Morgan); Heston has a sexy confidence and swagger (it’s amusing how often his shirt is off); Smith is steadfast and loyal.

Outside of Robert, the casting is minimal.

Only The Omega Man is notable with Anthony Zerbe as the creepy mutant leader; Rosalind Cash as a tough survivor whose appearance gives the film an interracial romance that I only note because it was so rare at the time; and a young Eric Laneuville as her little brother.

The infected are portrayed in different manners and gain strength, speed and aggression with each film.  

Director George A. Romero was reportedly inspired by the zombie-like undead in The Last Man on Earthfor his influential zombie film Night of the Living Dead.

In The Omega Man, they seem human, but the virus has given them albino characteristics of white hair and skin – marked by red burns from the sun – which are a contrast to their dark clothing and hooded capes. They also possess a violent mob-like mentality and are a cult – a “family” – that destroys culture (books, art) from the evil “before time” that they blame on Earth’s current state. If you aren’t a family member, like Robert, you will be hunted and killed.

By I Am Legend, they are very much a monster. Lightning fast and extremely violent, they have a fiendish appearance – fake fiend, that is.

These computer-generated images look like they were created by a computer and that’s never good. They’re only scary because of the high-pitched demonic screams created by Mike Patton, former lead singer of the metal band Faith No More.

In interviews about the film, Patton said he spent “four straight hours of screaming my head off” while improvising in front of a movie screen. He works; the CGI doesn’t. What makes it worse is that the filmmakers switched to using CGI for the creatures early in the filming because they didn’t think actors worked.

Watching these three film versions of Robert battle demons – an undead wife at the door, a mob building a two-story bonfire to draw him out to his death or the hounds of hell waiting to pounce when the sun goes down – are a few examples of the horror in his world.

But there’s another type of horror Matheson is writing about that is profoundly human. Robert Neville is a man alone and consumed by a terrible loneliness that is its own horror. That loneliness leads to the loss of a person’s humanity and a craving for contact even with a dog (an important character in the book and movies) or an inanimate object like a statue or mannequin. They are all used to great dramatic and emotional effect as surrogate companions or possible enemies. (Is that a mannequin or a person?).

Watch Price’s reaction to a stray dog, Heston get dressed up for Sunday dinner and conversation with a bust of Caesar and Smith carry on one-sided conversations with mannequins, pleading with one to simply “say hello to me.” Don’t be surprised if it gets to you – it’s supposed to. Ultimately, I Am Legend in all of its forms is about humanity.

A ‘Legend’ sequel

What happens when your alternate ending to a film is nearly perfect, yet you don’t use it?

You base a sequel off it nearly 20 years later.

I Am Legend writer and producer Akiva Goldsman recently announced that a sequel to his 2007 film is in development with Will Smith reprising his role and Michael B. Jordan joining the cast.

Though the film made near $600 million worldwide, it was criticized for straying from Richard Matheson’s 1954 novella especially with its cheesy epic Hollywood ending that goes big and dumb. (OK, those are my words.)

Without spoilers, the Smith character has been experimenting on “Darkseekers” to find a cure. When his laboratory is attacked, a kid could figure out the connection between the Alpha female Smith has captured and the angry Alpha male. What happens next is ridiculous, but it sounds like that will be amended with the new film.

Goldsman told Deadline that the sequel will work off of that alternate ending and be set about 20 years later. (Think the structure of HBO’s The Last of Us, which Goldsman says he is “obsessed with.”)

“We trace back to the original Matheson book, and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film,” Goldsman said in the interview. “What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text.”

If the film is how Goldsman describes it, this is one sequel I am looking forward to seeing.

– Toni Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.

Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and now leads the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.