At night, RobertĮats, drinks heavily and plays his records to drown out the taunting cries from He harvests garlicįrom his hothouse, creating an overwhelming and sickening stench. Hunts the creatures while loading up on gas and supplies. “belongs to his stomach,” filled with canned goods and the like. Windows and garlic and mirrors at the doors to ward off the vampires. He turns his home into a mini fortress with slats over Vampire/zombies, including an old friend, taunt Robert (played by Vincent Price) nightly despite the crosses, garlic and mirrors he puts on doors at his home in The Last Man on Earth. Life battling the nightly vampire attacks and his own demons. The story – and movies – will jump between those terrifyingĮarly days as frightened people succumb to the disease and Robert’s current A newspaper headline asks “Is Europe’s disease carried on the Of a disease spreading wildly overseas and worries of whether it can get to the

“before days” and his happy life with his wife and young daughter, the early signs Through Robert’s first-person account we learn about the To whatever is causing a pandemic that has wiped out the world, turning the few Robert Neville is a 36-year-old researcher who has immunity Matheson wrote I Am Legend in 1954 and set it in January of 1976, five months into a mysterious illness. (Yes, that’s a much newer film than we write about in Monsters and Matinees, but it’s important to include here.) Vincent Price arms himself with tools to destroy the plague vampires in The Last Man on Earth.

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. The already intriguing subject is made even better with Matheson’s addition of my favorite creature – the vampire. 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. How will it happen? When will it happen? Why will it The idea of the last man or woman on earth spurs my imagination. A trio of films bring to life Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend’

I am legend monsters in group