tstone
04-12-2008, 01:12 PM
The first adaptation of Richard Mattheson's "I Am Legend", this one details the trevails of Dr. Robert MORGAN (not Neville, unlike the book and the other two film adaptations),played by Vincent Price. This black and white 1964 Italian production takes place supposedly in some generic American city, but in actuality, is filmed in what looks like suburban/urban Italy.
Morgan has lived three years as the sole uninfected survivor of a mysterious plagued that has wiped out most of humanity and made most of the remaining survivors into some kind of mutants that posess some traits of vampires, yet they act like the classical Romero zombies, except that they talk. During the day, Morgan forages and hunts among buildings looking for lairing mutants. During the night, they come to his place and pound on his windows and doors, taunting him to come out. They come in numbers but seem weak and stupid. So weak, he can wade into a horde of them, and as long as he keeps moving and shoving, can keep them off of him. Which really kind of takes away from the menace considerably.
In this version, which is also in Will Smith's version, he gets a dog, but the dog gets the plague, so he has to kill it. And like all the other versions, he meets a woman. Like Omega Man, this woman is infected, but in this case, she is representing a group of infected humans who have developed some kind of serum that staves off the disease, though it doesn't cure it. She is intended to be scout for some kind of attack. Seems that Morgan, in his search and destroy mission, has whacked a few of her people, too. They want to form some kind of society, though exactly what this is is unclear.
Vincent Price is decent in this role, though most of the time, he seems to be kind of phoning it is. Only in moments does he seem to really inhabit the character. And the end? Completely hammy, striving for an emotional denoument, but missing totally.
The mutants, utterly unconvincing. In the Omega Man, they were dated and hokey, but I still believed them to be threatening. Not these. And these other society guys were so out of left field, completely lacking in setup, it felt tacked on.
Worth viewing just as a frame of reference, but that's it. Not really a worthy film, certainly not worth owning. Not scary, not suspenseful, not particularly well acted or written. Not horrible, but immnently forgetful.
Morgan has lived three years as the sole uninfected survivor of a mysterious plagued that has wiped out most of humanity and made most of the remaining survivors into some kind of mutants that posess some traits of vampires, yet they act like the classical Romero zombies, except that they talk. During the day, Morgan forages and hunts among buildings looking for lairing mutants. During the night, they come to his place and pound on his windows and doors, taunting him to come out. They come in numbers but seem weak and stupid. So weak, he can wade into a horde of them, and as long as he keeps moving and shoving, can keep them off of him. Which really kind of takes away from the menace considerably.
In this version, which is also in Will Smith's version, he gets a dog, but the dog gets the plague, so he has to kill it. And like all the other versions, he meets a woman. Like Omega Man, this woman is infected, but in this case, she is representing a group of infected humans who have developed some kind of serum that staves off the disease, though it doesn't cure it. She is intended to be scout for some kind of attack. Seems that Morgan, in his search and destroy mission, has whacked a few of her people, too. They want to form some kind of society, though exactly what this is is unclear.
Vincent Price is decent in this role, though most of the time, he seems to be kind of phoning it is. Only in moments does he seem to really inhabit the character. And the end? Completely hammy, striving for an emotional denoument, but missing totally.
The mutants, utterly unconvincing. In the Omega Man, they were dated and hokey, but I still believed them to be threatening. Not these. And these other society guys were so out of left field, completely lacking in setup, it felt tacked on.
Worth viewing just as a frame of reference, but that's it. Not really a worthy film, certainly not worth owning. Not scary, not suspenseful, not particularly well acted or written. Not horrible, but immnently forgetful.