Director: Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow
Year: 1964
Country: Italy/USA
Alternate Titles: L'ultimo uomo della Terra; Night Creatures; The Damned Walk at Midnight; The Naked Terror; I Am Legend
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Several years after the fall of humanity, the lone human left alive goes about his normal routine of clearing up the dead bodies littering the streets and changing the defenses on his home to make sure the vampires don't get him as he races to find a cure for the devastating condition.
Review:
This isn't that bad of a film, and it does feature some good moments. As is usually the case with one of these efforts, the majority of the film is linked to the fact that Price is at the forefront of the film's enjoyment. There's an effectiveness to the silent ritual that he goes through, replacing the garlic and mirrors around the house, sharpening stakes on a wood lathe, refurbishing his supply out of a giant walk-in freezer in a department store, staking various vampires throughout the city, that really spells out the society in that time very effectively. The fact that there's really no one else left is spelled out and never really becomes an issue, which makes the suspense and atmosphere present all the more effective.
That also ties into the other facet that's enjoyable here with the completely desolate and abandoned setting, as the opening scenes where he's seen being among the ruins and absolutely eerily quiet settings give this a true sense of a massive plague having hit that goes along nicely with the few encounters he has with the creatures, and it makes the film that much stronger. From their attempt to lure him out of the house with the chants beckoning him to rejoin their ranks to the fights inside the house, the film has that sense of isolation rather effectively. The finale is a nice mini-series of action scenes, including the beating outside the house, the chase through the decaying rubble, the seclusion inside the museum, and the final resolution playing out nearby, which has a lot to love about it, effectively ending the film with a great band that is nicely appreciated.
Alongside the rather eerie quality of the creatures, these add up into a nicely enjoyable film, as there's not a lot wrong with this one, but what's there is pretty big. The film really ends up dying in the middle section, where it stops dead to feature this long, drawn-out flashback that simply drags on and really kills the film. There's really no need for it to feature as much family drama as it does, yet there's plenty in the sequence, as well as a large amount of backstory that goes into the making of the virus that started the film. Rather than use it to draw a series of conclusions about, there's a repetitive feeling to these scenes that goes on much longer than they needed to be. The scene doesn't need to be a half-hour long, as the film spends most of the time dealing with that issue.
This ends up with the pace of it being way off. The other really big issue with the film is that, for being called vampires, the creatures behave much more like zombies. There's no real neck-biting; they all move slowly with very basic movements and a lack of fangs. There's even a scene late in the movie where the creatures are shown to be able to be killed with other instruments not normally associated with vampires, and they work on the creatures as well. There are some other issues at work with the film, yet these are the main issues here.
Overview: ****/5
A tad overrated but still a good movie, there's plenty of immensely likable factors within here that make for a highly influential and enjoyable effort, while a few of those flaws do keep it down. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment