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Halloween Extravaganza 2006
The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price
You know, I picked up a Vincent Price DVD the other day. It's one of those value bin things where you get multiple movies for a few bucks. So I went for it. THis one has the House on Haunted Hill which we'll get to later. But it also has a little gem known as The Last Man on Earth. Being a fan of post apocalyptic
movies, I decided to give it a go and was amazed at what I found. When I did the review for The Omega Man I honestly thought this was an original work. After all, how could that movie possibly be a remake of anything?
After watching The Last Man on Earth, I can honestly say that this isn't the case. The movie begins just like the Omega Man with shots of an abandoned and decaying Los Angeles. I'll try to refrain from making the same LA jokes here, but you get the point- the city looks even worse than usual and there's no traffic.
Since Vinent Price is the Last Man on Earth, he fills in the quiet parts with plenty of narration. Basically, you get a glimpse into a man who is entirely alone, save for those who are still infected by the disease that turns them into vampires. Let's just say he's the only non-mutant left on the face of the Earth. And he spends his days
just like you would. He gets up in the morning, collects the corpses of those who've died from the mutation, burns them in the pit and then sets out to discover where all the vampires go during the day. Once he's done, he picks up any supplies he needs and rushes home before dark
You see, the vampires have a routine too. Every night when it gets dark, they wander over to his house and try to smash their way in. The vampires in this movie want to eat him, but they're exceptionally weak and feeble minded, so they're not much of a match. And then it all starts again the next morning. As you can guess, Morgan is a bit depressed at this point.
But then we're let in on a little retrospect. It seems that before civilization got wiped out by this plague that turns people into vampires, he was a scientist who worked with germs and what not. He had a wife, a daughter and a best friend named Ben. Through Morgan's memories, we get a glimpse of what happened. First his daughter got sick and died, then his wife. Society at this point was starting to crumble. There were wild rumors about the dead
coming back to life and a mandate that every corpse had to be incinerated in the pit. Morgan worked tirelessly at the lab, but he could not find a solution, there was no way to cure this thing.
When his wife dies, Morgan can't bear to have her incinerated, so he sneaks her corpse out of the house and buries her in a field. You guessed it, she follows him home that night and boy is he surprised to see that his wife has come back from the dead. Maybe his friend Ben was right all this time...too bad he got turned into a vampire too. He comes to Morgan's house every night and tries to kill him.
But then something happens. One day while running his usual errands, he runs across some vampire corpses that have been staked. Only these aren't his stakes. Could it be he's not alone after all? And then another stroke of good fortune happens- he comes across a dog. He even brings it home and dresses its wounds, but it dies of the plague within hours of being taken in. Things really aren't going good for this guy.
Well, our hero finally gets a break. While out collecting corpses, he spots a real live woman. He chases her down and brings her home. Only something isn't quite right. She's allergic to garlic and doesn't like seeing her reflection. What gives? She finally pulls a gun on him and tells him that she was sent to come scope things out. She's got the plague, but they manage to keep it under control with medications. Now that she's discovered he doesn't know how to cure it, she tells him that her buddies are all
coming to kill him tonight. It seems they want to create a new society of freaks and he's standing in their way. It's not his fault he's immune, he tells her that he suspects it was from being bitten by a bat that carried the plague years back.
While she's passed out, he seizes the opportunity and gives her some of his blood. It turns out he carried the cure all along. He's ecstatic, but it's too late. The rest of the freaks have arrived and they're bent on destroying him.
After a long chase, the mutants trap Morgan in a church. As they surround him, he taunts them, calling them freaks. Well, they must be thin skinned because that's enough for one of them to throw a stake at him. Bullseye, Morgan's been impaled and as he dies, he exclaims "I am the last man on Earth."
Because he did cure the woman, it's not quite clear if that's the end of civilization as we know it, or if she will be able to pass the cure on. In either case, this movie is extremely similar to the Omega Man. The only major difference is that in the Omega Man, there is only one group of mutants, whereas this one has the vampires and the mutants. Other than that, the stories are pretty much the same.
If you haven't seen this one, try to get your hands on it, it's worth the rent and one of the best Vincent Price movies I've seen. He really brings that sense of flat out depression and desperation to the movie which is probably how most of us would feel after three years of being alone with vampires.
-Mark
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