In my review of the recent remake of I AM LEGEND I made the point that Richard Matheson's source novel is probably unfilmable for several reasons . Having recently seen this 1964 adaptation which sticks to the story rather closely my fears were confirmed
There's nothing more difficult than to make a solitary literary character cinematic andaudience friendly . Thought processes are turned in to expositional voice over and all screen writing gurus agree that you should never use voice over to tell a story and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is full of expositional voice over . What makes it worse is that original author Richard Matheson ( Writing under pseudonym Logan Swanson ) co-wrote this screenplay . Couldn't the story have started with the plague sweeping across America thereby eliminating the need for any exposition ? We could have started the story from the beginning with the audience discovering the plot turns as Robert Morgan discovered them ? A much better way of narrative storytelling
It's not just the storytelling that's the problem , it's the production values too . TLMOE was filmed in Italy and the director Ubaldo Ragona seems to have been influenced by Italian Neo-Realism . Can there be a more tedious cinematic movement than Italian Neo-Realism ? The directing doesn't make a fantastical story anymore credible it just makes the on screen events drag along at a snail's pace . Indeed there seems to be an abrasive clash of styles as we're shown slow burning visuals alongside cheap horror gimmicks such as intrusive melodramatic music . There's other niggling things too like a child who looks like she's at death's door and her mother wondering if she should be sent to school ! Things like this makes characterization ridiculous
Since the film revolves around a major protagonist that the audience have to latch on to it's imperative that an actor of charisma is cast and I'm afraid that Vincent Price is not that man . He's not helped by the banal dialogue he's given " Everyday there's more of them as I take them to the pit . The pit . The pit " but he's not really the type of actor who can carry a film which explains why he's best remembered for appearing in cheap B movies like this one , but I guess he was fairly cheap to hire
So in effect the best version of I AM LEGEND is the 1971 movie THE OMEGA MAN . I say " best version" because it is cinematic even though it dispenses with the essential subtext of Matheson's novel and goes its own way but that movie was very entertaining where as this movie and the recent Will Smith star vehicle prove that good books tend not to make great movies
There's nothing more difficult than to make a solitary literary character cinematic andaudience friendly . Thought processes are turned in to expositional voice over and all screen writing gurus agree that you should never use voice over to tell a story and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is full of expositional voice over . What makes it worse is that original author Richard Matheson ( Writing under pseudonym Logan Swanson ) co-wrote this screenplay . Couldn't the story have started with the plague sweeping across America thereby eliminating the need for any exposition ? We could have started the story from the beginning with the audience discovering the plot turns as Robert Morgan discovered them ? A much better way of narrative storytelling
It's not just the storytelling that's the problem , it's the production values too . TLMOE was filmed in Italy and the director Ubaldo Ragona seems to have been influenced by Italian Neo-Realism . Can there be a more tedious cinematic movement than Italian Neo-Realism ? The directing doesn't make a fantastical story anymore credible it just makes the on screen events drag along at a snail's pace . Indeed there seems to be an abrasive clash of styles as we're shown slow burning visuals alongside cheap horror gimmicks such as intrusive melodramatic music . There's other niggling things too like a child who looks like she's at death's door and her mother wondering if she should be sent to school ! Things like this makes characterization ridiculous
Since the film revolves around a major protagonist that the audience have to latch on to it's imperative that an actor of charisma is cast and I'm afraid that Vincent Price is not that man . He's not helped by the banal dialogue he's given " Everyday there's more of them as I take them to the pit . The pit . The pit " but he's not really the type of actor who can carry a film which explains why he's best remembered for appearing in cheap B movies like this one , but I guess he was fairly cheap to hire
So in effect the best version of I AM LEGEND is the 1971 movie THE OMEGA MAN . I say " best version" because it is cinematic even though it dispenses with the essential subtext of Matheson's novel and goes its own way but that movie was very entertaining where as this movie and the recent Will Smith star vehicle prove that good books tend not to make great movies