About two years ago I read a novella by Richard Matheson titled I Am Legend which was written in 1954. This work continues to haunt my soul quite regularly, and a quick look at the basic plot of the narrative, as quoted from wikipedia below, would make you think, “oh, wow, another post-apocalyptic vampire story …”
The book takes place in the then-future of 1976-1979, and opens with the monotony and horror of the daily life of the protagonist, Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the only survivor of an apocalypse caused by a pandemic of a bacterium the symptoms of which are very similar to vampirism. He lives in a house fortified against nocturnal attacks bythe roaming infected, and sallies forth by daylight to kill the sleeping vampires. Every day he also makes repairs to his house, boarding up windows, stringing and hanging garlic, and disposing of vampires’ corpses on his lawn.
What is remarkable about this particular riff on vampires is Matheson’s ability to immerse the reader in the quotidian labors of Robert Neville’s extraordinarily horrific circumstances. From the first pages you accompany the last man on earth through his daily struggle to find meaning in a universe literally emptied of humanity. In fact, Neville’s status as human frames him as the marginalized other in a world populated by the undead. The loneliness and horror of his situation is only matched by the austere manner with these realities are narrated, which makes for a strikingly original and modern re-imagining of the vampire legend. So, if you like horror or SciFi or some combination of the two set in a post-apocalyptic future - then I Am Legend is a sure thing for you! I would argue that if even you don’t like the above genres but are fascinated by narratives that explore the gossamer psychological fabric that enmeshes a vision of humanity, then, once again, this is the story for you!
However, selling you on reading I Am Legend is not the intention of this post but, rather, a potentially “beneficial” side-effect. After having read this work I continually found myself saying, “This would be an unbelievable movie! I can’t believe no one has thought of producing it yet!” Nonetheless, I was certain that films like The Blade Trilogy, & internet archive (a paragon for this vision of sharing - their tagline is as modest as “Universal access to human knowledge!”) for their collection of public domain feature films, I came across The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 film adaptation of I Am Legend starring the iconic Vincent Price, directed by Ubaldo Ragona (a no name director who was responsible for butchering Matheson’s script), and produced in Italy (at the time a mecca for b horror movies as my post on Mario Bava attempts to illustrate).
After I found the The Last Man on Earth, I was then pointed to yet another film adaptation of this novel, which was none other then The Omega Man starring Chalton Heston - the greatest over-actor in film history! This in turn led me to a series of conversations about yet another adaptation of this work, which will keep the original title I Am Legend, currently in pre-production tentatively starring Will Smith and Johnny Depp (which is extra scarey!). You know, it is really amazing the things you can find out on this box. Hey, who knows, maybe I’ll discover that they did, indeed, make a film adaptation of Afred Bester’s The Stars, My Destination sometime soon!
Check out the first two minutes of The Last Man on Earth below. For those 1980s film fans, Night of the Comet seems to take its vision of an abandoned LA directly from this movie, which in turns seems to take its cue from 1961 The Twilight Zone episode “The Midnight Sun:”
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Gardner Campbell’s my name
Terra is my nation
Deep space my dwelling place
The stars my destination
Did I already mention that Donald Fagen of Steely Dan is a big fan of TSMD, too? Great minds….
Death to pan-n-scan!
Don’t forget to jaunt back to UMW every so often!
Interestingly, the internet is how I found out about the book - the complete opposite path you took.
That movie still haunts me like the book haunts you. Sometimes I look around the world I live in and imagine what it would look like with no humans in it - no electricity, little noise, weeds everywhere, nature taking it all back.
I read this amazing novella online a couple of years ago. I was drawn into the story from page one and couldn’t stop until I read the entire thing!
I had seen “The Omega Man” years ago and never connected that movie with this story. However, once I thought about it, I could see the similarities.
The novella was better.
What amazes me about this story is that with the interest in biological entities and their far-reaching effects, this is still a very timely story.
Lea
Thanks for the thoughtul comment Lea.