An overview of the novel "I Am Legend" (1954) by Richard Matheson and the films it inspired
The Novel
The novel that started it all was written in 1954 by
Richard Matheson, one of the great American writers of sci fi and horror
genre.
You wouldn’t think it when you look at it but I Am Legend
is one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Coming in at
only 160 pages it had an enduring impact on the pop culture ever since, and its
reverberations can still be felt now in such works like 28 Days Later
(2002) or The Walking Dead (2010) for example.
And that shortness of text took me slightly off guard, since the
book pictured in the photo at the top of this entry is actually a collection of short stories, the
first of which is I Am Legend. So, wrongfully believing the novel is as long
as the collection, at 312 pages, the ending of it surprised me and seemed
abrupt. I wanted it to be longer. Instead I launched straight into another
short story and I was wandering as to what is suddenly going on, until I
figured it out.
Since I'm trying not to reveal too much of the story, I
wont give away how it ends. But we can discus other things about it. The
action is set in futuristic Los Angeles, spanning 1975 to 1979. No disco balls
here though.
The main character is Robert Neville. The Last Man On Earth
(or TLMOE for short) as far as he is aware. An apocalyptic event destroyed the world
as he knew it to be. He lives day to day, surviving boarded up in his house, as
the people infected by a plague and turned into vampires besiege him every night,
until the first rays of sunlight hit L.A. The vampires are led by Ben Cortman,
his former co-worker at the plant.
We now take it for granted but what was revolutionary about
it when it was first published was the scientific reason for the apocalypse.
That the vampirism in the people is the result of the disease caused by the
bacteria spread by dust storms and mosquitoes. Yes, it is disease that wipes out humanity. Much like weaponized Ebola virus would if it had the
chance. Instead of killing people as fast as Ebola would, the disease in the
novel turns them into vampires. Yet…
This is not just a novel about a lone survivor battling and
fending off vampires. It deals with deeper human issues, such as loneliness and
effects of isolation. With alcoholism as a result of trying to beat it. As well
as sexual repression and lack of intimacy with a member of opposite sex. That
is…
Until Ruth shows up and enters his life. The object of his
desire the moment he sees her.
The flashbacks to 1975 when the outbreak first started, or pre-apocalypse, is an important part of the novel as well as in all 3 official
screen adaptations. The story during a post-apocalypse, or “present time” is
set 1976 – 1979.
Neville is immune to the disease, but not to acts of
physical violence during night time, against which he fends off with crosses,
garlic and mirrors. However, during day time, when vampires are in state of
hibernation, it is Neville who is on the offensive. He methodically clears the
streets of L.A. from vampires holed up in their own houses. It is a thankless,
never ending task of finding them, driving wooden stakes through their bodies,
or dragging them outside, to be destroyed by the sunlight.
The vampires themselves are agile and posses decent amount
of intelligence. Female vampires even provoke him with their naked bodies,
striking sexy poses to lure him outside. The vampires can run and climb up the
walls and trees like vampires in the folklore can, but they can’t turn into
bats for example, giving it a dose of realism. They are realistic vampires, not
mythological ones.
The real origin of vampirism is not really confirmed, but
Neville has reinvented himself as sort of an amateur doctor who, after repairing his home fortress, spends a lot of
his free time trying to research the bacteria
and to find the cure for the disease.
Things go on like that, but as both Neville and the vampires
will soon discover, there is another, third group of characters in this whole
story.
Somewhere in the middle of the novel things get bogged down
for awhile after a seemingly uninfected dog enters Neville’s life. The dog
element will later feature prominently in some of the film adaptations. In the
novel it just didn’t work for me.
For entertainment, Neville listens to his gramophone records
in the evening as he drinks himself to sleep, seated on a couch in front of a
wall with a mural painted on it. The mural depicting a tropical beach
somewhere, sometime… When life was better.
Two Strands
From this then revolutionary idea, two separate artistic
strands came out, depicted on the big screen and later TV. The first strand
depicts The Last Man On Earth and that is what this blog entry is about. TLMOE
was officially depicted in 3 films and we will go through them all one by one
further down. But first, let us take a brief detour into the second strand this
novel inspired.
The Zombie Strand
In 1968 George Romero and his group of artistic companions
created Night of the Living Dead. It turned out to be another revolutionary
improvement on the already revolutionary idea. Romero and his partners
introduced a game changing twist on the idea…
The diseased are not vampires. They are zombies. The undead.
The modern zombie genre as we now know it was born. Where the undead are driven
by instinct, lumbering around, looking to eat flesh.
In Romero's own words:
"I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend. I thought I Am Legend was about revolution. I said if you're
going to do something about revolution, you should start at the
beginning. I mean, Richard starts his book with one man left; everybody
in the world has become a vampire. I said we got to start at the
beginning and tweak it up a little bit. I couldn't use vampires because
he did, so I wanted something that would be an earth-shaking change.
Something that was forever, something that was really at the heart of
it."
That zombie strand in turn later split into two sub-strands as
well. Romero kept making his own brand of undead films, that spawned remakes
later on, sticking to his own ideas about what zombies should be and what
motivates them to do what they do.
However, one of Romero's partners in the original 1968 film,
John Russo, had his own ideas and made his films with zombies which were a bit
different. After a falling out they settled in court after a protracted legal
dispute. John Russo kept the right to make his zombie movies but under The
Living Dead brand to differentiate them from the Romero’s Of The Dead branded
films.
Regardless of the falling out Romero and his former partner
in crime had, the entire zombie strand that came out of Matheson’s novel is
still going strong and well. It is very much alive and breathing. The spirit of
it lives in absolute hit TV series The Walking Dead which has been running since
2010 based on a comic series running since 2003.
With the Digital Revolution that elevated video games as the
new form of entertainment vying for dominance there are also video games like
Dead Island (2011) and others.
Now let us check out all the official films…
The Last Man on Earth (1964), dir by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow
Is played by Vincent Price and the character’s name was
changed to Robert Morgan. Matheson is credited as the writer of the novel that is
mentioned by it’s full title. However, Matheson also worked on the screenplay
for this particular film, but was dissatisfied by the final product after
seeing how it all came out. To disassociate himself from the project before the
theatrical release, he used the pseudonym of Logan Swanson instead of his real
name for the screenplay credit.
If you read the novel you will understand why. Yet, it is
not that the film in itself is bad. It just doesn’t come off the way Matheson
had envisioned it. The way he wanted it to look. In fact, story wise, this film
follows the novel the closest out of the three films made.
Matheson also felt that Price was miscast for the role.
Well… Yes and no. Better to say; Price does a decent job of it, like the other
two actors portraying TLMOE do, and he brings his own acting style to the role.
The bottom line is; if you were a film goer and a horror fan in 1964 and saw
this movie, there is a good chance you’d be entertained by it, and that is all
that matters.
TLMOE is renamed as Doctor Robert Morgan, who works in a
medical research center and has no military background, unlike the portrayals
that will come after him. The other two doctors who will be immune to the
disease and become TLMOE.
The story is set in L.A. with present time in 1968 and
flashbacks in 1965. Vampires are his enemies again, just like in the novel.
Well… They are classed as vampires, but… In movements and behavior they fully
resemble zombies as we know them now, when they attack the house where Doctor
Morgan is holed up in. And you can’t clearly see those signature fangs all
vampires have, so they might as well be zombies.
And here is the key moment or reason that inspired Romero to
depict his plague victims as zombies rather rather than vampires. Because it
has already been done to an extent here and… It works!
It leaves me wandering if the Italian filmmakers, who made
this film in Rome, have done it unintentionally or not. Yet, it still works.
Maybe there was something that was lost in translation when the Italians first
red the script. The actors, who were all Italians with the exception of
Price, and who had their lines later dubbed in English, suppose to act like
vampires, but they came off looking like the living dead instead. Not just
that, but the vampires they portray look less intelligent, slow moving and more
brain dead than the ones in the novel.
The film still touches on themes of human isolation,
loneliness, desperation, but… There is no excessive drinking here. No lengthy
dwelling about it all. No nudity and certainly no sex. It is 1964 after all and
the film reflects those times.
Ruth, who is Morgan’s love interest, appears here too. So
does the dog, which played such great role in the novel. This time it looks like
a poodle or a similar smaller breed. Dog scenes are mercifully short for
practical and time constraint reasons.
As a film, it is an OK entertainment, and it is nice to
watch it immediately after reading the novel, just to see how they had adapted
it, what stayed in what got cut out.
Oh, and for the fans of The Walking Dead… Remember that
iconic scene in the pilot episode of Season 1, where the dead wife returns back
to the house where she died and starts turning the door handle? The door handle
scene that even made it into Season 1 title sequence?
Well, this film is where the idea for it originated from.
This is where it first appeared. The Walking Dead series makers even dropped in
the little homage clues like the character playing the husband being called
Morgan.
The Omega Man (1971), dir by Boris Sagal
In the opening credits it states that the film is based on "a"
novel by Richard Matheson, but it doesn’t feel the need to mention the title
and identify which one exactly.
TLMOE is played by 48 year old Charlton Heston and the
character’s name is again Robert Neville this time. He is a full colonel in the
US Army and a doctor to boot, achievements that are plausible for a mature man
like him to have attained at that age.
Heston being Heston, he won’t be playing characters that are
obviously emotionally breaking down, like in the novel, so his Doctor Neville
is a much more psychologically collected hero that uses a machine gun as his
main weapon of choice, instead of wooden stakes, garlic, crosses and mirrors.
As Neville, he is a tough guy that spouts funny one liners,
yet Heston manages to pull it off in his own way. I can guess that Matheson
didn’t quite expect Heston’s portrayal of Neville to be what he originally had in mind either but
I can also imagine the following reply from Heston to Matheson;
"Look Matheson,
if you have a guy that survives for two years in post apocalyptic world, he
needs to be tough and he needs to shoot back at his enemies. He is not going to
just sit down in his bunker and drink himself to sleep. The only way the
vampires will take Neville’s gun away is from his cold, dead hands.”
And… Heston would be right. On that level, Heston’s
portrayal works.
The story’s present time is set in 1977 with flashbacks of
the outbreak set in 1975. This time the cause for the plague and humanity’s
downfall is germ warfare between the Soviet Union and China.
Neville’s enemies are The Family. Instead of being vampires,
they are portrayed as a religious cult of albino mutants that live by night and
fear the sun. Much like vampires do. They are the most intelligent of all of
Neville’s adversaries portrayed in the novel and films.
The Family have intelligent conversations amongst themselves
and with Neville, which is usually induced with a new religious dogma that
totally rejects science as they blame it for the state that they had found
themselves in.
The Family even has an impromptu court and legal system. So,
they won’t just kill Neville outright. They will put him on trial first if they can. They
are nocturnal creatures, dressed in black robes with hoods that make them look
like numerous grim reapers wandering the streets of L.A. in the night.
They even evoke some semblance of respect if not outright fear. Or rather,
fear not of what The Family can do to Neville but that such a cult could really
spring up in the event of any real cataclysmic event befalling the Earth. The
mutants are led by Matthias, the cult leader and former news anchorman, who now
has a new role as a kind of a bishop in this new world order.
This being 1971, things have changed since I Am Legend was
last depicted on the big screen seven years prior. It was made in the wake of
the sexual revolution, Woodstock, Summer of Love, with Vietnam War in full force. That was also the time of the rise of all sorts of new religious
cults that tickled the minds of the baby boom generation, some of whom were all
too willing to question the old, established Abrahamic religions of their
parents. And to join such cults.
And this film reflects that age and time. Neville doesn’t
just listen to gramophone records, but watches movies in the cinema during
day times too, when vampires are sleeping. Movies he screens himself, operating a
projector. Woodstock (1970) being the one we see in the cinema at the beginning.
But he is alone and he plays chess against himself too.
Alcohol seem to be plentiful and Heston apparently has no problem with handling
it. After all, if he can handle the mutants, why wouldn’t he be able to handle J & B whiskey?
One of the things that comes at you straight away as the evidence of changing times is the presence of African Americans in the film. Yes, Black people finally show up here. The filmmakers were obviously aware of evolving race relations of the times and are much more sensitive towards such issues.
It is a much more inclusive cast. Other children human
survivors TLMOE encounters seems like a rainbow of races, with White, Black,
Native Americans, Asian, and other survivors in there.
African Americans have a chance to play characters with some
more flesh to it, as oppose to typical roles such as slaves on a plantation or
residents of a run down inner city hood with no perspective.
The first major one is played by Rosalind Cash. She is Lisa,
TLMOE’s love interest. Much younger than Heston at 33 and very pretty. Hey, so
what if she is 15 years younger than him. It's the end of the world, right?
Age, race and class no longer divide humanity as much as obvious divisions
between the remaining humans, of whom there doesn’t seem to be many, and the
mutants out to get them.
Lisa is no little helpless damsel in distress. She is
tough, she is mean, she handles her hand gun so expertly that Heston is highly impressed. Yes, she certainly shoots back at the mutants.
The second prominent African American is Brother Zachary.
And by Brother I don’t mean that as a monicker for a Black male person, but as
a term used amongst the members of a religious order. Like The Family where
Brother Zachary is Brother Matthias’ main henchman. His second in command. So in
that regard too, on a story level, you got to give it to The Family for being
racially inclusive in their mischievous ways.
So African American’s are playing either the good guys, or
in this case with Lisa, the good girls, or the bad guys as in case of Brother
Zachary. Whatever the artistic and role requirements expect of them.
That of course is not the only reason or way this film
reflects the changing times. The other one is much more relaxed sexual mores
and depiction of nudity. With Rosalind Cash being comfortable at showing her
naked body, after she and TLMOE hook up in his private pad in the hills above
the mutant infested L.A.
It is easy to dismiss it now that so many years have gone
by, but this film has a certain undeniable charm to it. Apparently it is Tim
Burton’s favorite film. The humor with one liners is intended, but…
There is also some unintended humor here, early in the
film. After TLMOE is tried and convicted by The Family in their mock court of
heresy, they take him to be burnt at a stake. As a witch I guess?
And Heston is wearing this long white pointy hat, almost
like a dunce hat but longer than that. He tries to wrestle himself free from
his restraints and while he does so in that pointy hat it all just looks
unintentionally ridiculous to such an extent that it made me crack up laughing
several times as I kept rewinding the segment to watch it again.
At one point the dunce hat falls off of Heston and it
doesn’t reappear in further scenes. Yet I felt Boris Sagal, the director of
this film (and father of Katey Sagal who played Peggy Bundy) probably wanted
Heston to wear the dunce hat for the duration of that scene sequence.
You know… To emphasize the dichotomy of situation, and maybe
even state the obvious in cinematic sense, with The Family all looking like
grim reapers wearing black hoods contrasted against TLMOE’s white pointy hat.
But Heston probably told Sagal a word or two about not making him look like a
complete idiot. And good thing he did if he did.
But look, don’t think I’m knocking this film down too much
because of that humorous vignette. It is something I can’t resist writing
about. This film does have a certain charm to it for sure, and it is very brave
for it’s times. It has new ideas, some minor nudity and Heston enjoys his drink
here and there without sinking straight into alcoholic binges. Thankfully,
there are no bad dog scenes.
I Am Legend (2007), dir by Francis Lawrence
Finally, only 53 years after it was written, the novel’s
title is fully used. Therefore Matheson being credited as the writer of “the”
novel this time. The Last Man On Earth is Will Smith, and this movie again
shows how far we’ve come that we have an African American not just in the
movie, but playing the lead character.
Smith is Doctor Robert Neville, a virologist and as
appropriate for his younger age of 39 than Heston’s 48, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, who
like the other two Doctors is also immune to the disease and works to find a
cure for it.
He too battles depression and loneliness and in that regard
the character is the closest to Matheson’s version. This being a new age where
emotions are much more freely expressed, Smith displays an appropriate amount
of weakness for the audience to be able to identify with him fully. After all,
he is only human, like his audience is.
Yet, he has two great weapons on his disposal when he roams
the streets. A modified, sleek looking modern rifle that comfortably slings off of his
shoulders and which he wields with expert precision. The other great weapon
faithfully at his side is Sam the dog. His faithful German shepherd. Tell you
what, that dog is a star too. In the flashback scenes Sam is played by another
German shepherd puppy, depicting the time before Sam grew up. The whole dog
element in the story is fully brought to it's full potential and works perfectly.
The location is the star in itself. No longer does TLMOE
stalks the streets of L.A. during daytime. He is now doing it in New York City.
And I mean real New York City, not that computer generated fakery that human
eye can always somehow recognize. The filmmakers didn’t want to fake NYC. They
used the real thing.
Therefore that feel of watching post apocalyptic NYC that
came right out of that great speculative fiction TV show Life After People (2008 - 2010), where it is depicted how
the world would look like if people suddenly disappeared and nature started
reclaiming urban centers. Well, grass and trees grow wild in Manhattan, deer
and lions that hunt them roam the streets too.
During day time that is. During night time something else
roams the streets of New York, looking for TLMOE’s hide out.
The story’s present time is set this time in 2012 and
flashbacks in 2009, keeping in tradition of making the whole thing futuristic
from the point of view of release of the novel or the film.
The cause for the plague? Again, in keeping with tradition,
another pressing issue that affects humanity and has killed millions of us is used
as the reason for the plague. Cancer. Well, the cure for cancer that has gone
wrong. Cancer is a health issue that strikes home for many today.
The film opens with Doctor Emma Thompson revealing in a TV
interview that after 10,009 successful test trials she had created a cure for
cancer, by using the so called modified Krippin Virus that attacks the cancer
cells and cures the patient.
In a slight jab at today’s corporate media, such a ground
breaking news announcement of discovering the cure for cancer, something that
would automatically guarantee a Nobel Prize win in Medicine, is made after the sport
anchors give their expert analyses and opinions about that year’s Super Bowl.
Well… The cure for cancer turns out to be a disaster as the
Krippin Virus mutates, becomes airborne and wipes out most of humanity in short
order. Those who survived seem to be only TLMOE and the Darkseekers who are his
enemies, led by Alpha Male.
Darkseekers too can be classed as mutants, but there are no
intelligent conversations and philosophical debates here between them like with The Family. More animal than humans,
they growl, they snarl and they are very, very fast. They want to kill TLMOE. He wants to survive and find the antidote for the Krippin Virus. It’s as far as
it goes between them.
Yet, the story is powerful and Smith does a great job as
TLMOE. The best of all. His Neville is cool and collected when he needs to be,
but with obvious signs of being psychologically affected by isolation of human
contact.
TLMOE no longer plays gramophone records or watches movies
in bulky film projectors. Instead, he watches DVDs and listens to Bob Marley CDs.
On a symbolical aside, Bob Marley himself was a victim of cancer at age of 36.
Neville makes a run to video rental store now and then to
pick up movies in alphabetical order. On one occasion, he returns Martin
Scorcese’s GoodFellas (1990) in it’s place on the shelf, remarking to Hank the mannequin he interacts with how he is making his way through the “G’s”. Shrek
(2001) also features in the film later, and Neville can recite it’s script line by
line.
There is no sex, nudity or excessive alcohol consumption
here. There is no need for it. Not in this day and age where adult
entertainment on the internet is only a click of a mouse button away and where
modern world is saturated with it.
It would just get in the way of telling the story. We want
to watch TLMOE blasting away the Darkseekers. It just wouldn’t suit the big
blockbuster depiction and Smith's clear cut image as a family man to put too
much sex into it.
There is a woman in the film of course, Anna and her son
Ethan, but they are representative of the whole humanity as oppose to Anna
being purely his love interest. 2007 film version has the best story, the best
depiction, great production values…
One thing that some people reported as getting in the way of
fully absorbing the story at times is CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery of the
Darkseekers. The filmmakers opted for fully CGI depiction of them, modeled on
actors in those CGI suits with dots, as it made the entire filming effort
easier and safer to make in real life New York City.
One of the crew members remarked that after placing real
actors and extras into real Darkseekers costumes, the entire performance looked
like the attack of the angry mimes in the screen test. Therefore the CGI
version.
The first time I saw this movie I remember how that CGI
jumped at me. Specifically how those elongated Darkseeker jaws looked ridiculous and over the top, but… Seven years since and our entertainment has
changed.
You can’t avoid CGI any more and most people kind of got
used to it to an extent. Still, your mind just knows somehow that it is
watching a pixel and not a real thing. And there is another unpleasant thing
that rears it’s ugly head unexpectedly, called the Uncanny Valley Effect. It is
something that most filmmakers are aware of by now and are trying to avoid it
like hell when dealing with CGI or animation. It is best noticed with
celebrities who have botched or less than successful facelift procedures.
But apart from the Darkseekers and few things here and
there, producers stick to the real things, real actors, real New York City. And
in turn they have created an awesome work of art and entertainment.
Final Word
The Last Man On Earth and the novel that spawned the films have
their place in film history. Yes, the zombie strand still keeps going after the final film featuring the character of The Last Man On Earth was produced. You can argue that the full potential of TLMOE strand
is too restrictive and already fully realized.
After all, if TLMOE joins other survivors and wanders the post
apocalyptic world he is no longer TLMOE any more, right? What you have is The
Walking Dead instead.
But still… There is something about that idea. The only
person in the world, surrounded by monsters at night… It’s truly a scary
concept and there could at least be enough potential left for a prequel.
