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1964's Italian-produced "The Last Man on Earth" ("L'Ultimo Uomo Della Terra") was the first attempt to bring "I Am Legend" to the screen, and the results, while well-intentioned, remain mixed at best. Casting Vincent Price as the lead (and changing Neville's name to "Dr. Robert Morgan"), Ubaldo Ragona's "Last Man..." tells more or less the same story, retaining Matheson's Ben Cortman (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) as the shrill antagonist, the discovery of a lone female survivor (Emma Danieli) and respectably capturing the author's bleak, sorrowful world view (from Price's narration: "Another day to live through...might as well get on with it..."). While the black and white cinematography is suitably atmospheric and at times reminiscent of the classic thrillers of Mario Bava, the production suffers from an obvious micro budget, minimal makeup FX, and a bizarre combination of American and Italian background detail (Price's Chevrolet station wagon, barren streets littered with abandoned Fiats). However, one could argue (and I do) that "Last Man"s low budget often benefits its "docu-drama" quality , enhancing more chilling vampire attack scenes, ala Romero's "Night Of The Living Dead" and the recent hit "The Blair Witch Project".

1971's Warner Bros. Production "The Omega Man" is the better-known take on the material, thanks to frequent late-night TV showings, a recent DVD reissue, and the considerable presence of lead Charlton Heston (in part two of his late 60s/early 70s trilogy starting with "Planet Of The Apes" and ending in 1973 with "Soylent Green").

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While benefiting from the higher production values of a major studio, "The Omega Man" has actually dated worse than its European predecessor, given the filmmakers' attempts to comment on the then-current counter-culture "scene" (read: the early 1970s). Matheson's vampires have been replaced by robed, gun-toting albinos sporting sunglasses under the leadership of shaggy-haired Manson-figure "Mathias" (Anthony Zerbe) in the night time sequences, blandly directed by TV veteran Boris Sagal. The surviving female, played by Rosalind Cash is rendered silly via her "Cleopatra Jones" fashions and excessive jive-talk. There's even a commune of surviving "with it" flower children, and the added hilarity of current NRA mouthpiece Heston weeping at a private screening of "Woodstock" (Heston, btw, in actuality found "Woodstock" tedious but selected the film only for its scenes of communal carousing). The actor unfortunately wasted no time in milking the Christ-like aspects of the his character for all they were worth, right down to dying in a fountain with arms stretched and palms bleeding. Ah well, at least the screenplay by John William and Joyce H. Corrington (both to later write "Battle For The Planet Of The Apes") captured some of Matheson's survivalist procedural and kept the character name as "Neville".

At the time, Heston was terribly impressed by his reinterpretation of the classic novel: "This is another of a not-very-long list of films I have more or less personally conceived, and this may turn out to be the best of them" (a few years later, Chuck changed his mind: "this picture doesn’t please me that much now, and neither does my performance in it." )

Matheson wasn't terribly honoured by Heston's vision, either, and has said "it [the film] was so far removed from my book, I don’t know why they bothered, it was no more "I Am Legend" than "Little Miss Marker."

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"I Am Legend" remains in print around the world, winning new fans with each passing year, and in this age of Anne Rice, "Buffy" and its spin-offs, there exists a vocal movement to see Matheson's book brought to the screen again, in faithful form with all of the visual wonders CGI and state-of-the art makeup FX can help achieve. Ridley Scott was attached to a new Warner Bros. adaptation for several years, with Arnold Schwarzenegger more or less committed to star as Neville, until the studio pulled the plug due to concerns over a perceived escalating budget (Arnold vs. vampires under the helm of the director of "Alien": what, exactly, was the reason for hesitation here?).

Scott gave up and moved on to "Gladiator" and now "Hannibal", but the project reportedly remains in development (Warner Bros. has registered a website named for the title of the book--check it out, but there's nothing there!), with a new rewrite now under the guidance of "X Files" director Rob Bowman.

Until then, fans will have to make due with the timeless novel (still in print around the world and as fresh as if it were published yesterday), comic book adaptations, and various fan sites on the web.

You can also get your dose of Matheson from his many excellent Poe interpretations for Roger Corman ("The Raven", "Masque Of The Red Death"), and several other superb film adaptations of his own literary works, including Jack Arnold's "The Incredible Shrinking Man", Steven Spielberg's "Duel", John Hough's "The Legend Of Hell House", Dan Curtis' "Trilogy Of Terror" (yes, that one featuring the homicidal doll chasing Karen Black!), Jeannot Swarc's "Somewhere In Time", and Vincent Ward's "What Dreams May Come".

-RobertL

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