How to Survive the Apocalypse with a Station Wagon, a Hammer, and the Most Dramatic Voice in Hollywood
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching Vincent Price, dressed in a sharp 1960s suit, driving a station wagon full of dead bodies to a massive, smoky burning pit, while a group of pathetic, slow-moving vampires gently call his name outside his house like a disappointed landlord.
Welcome, my friends, to the lonely, depressing, and wonderfully atmospheric world of post-apocalyptic Rome disguised as Los Angeles.
If you’ve never heard of The Last Man on Earth, congratulations: you’ve only watched the Will Smith version (I Am Legend) and missed out on the real deal. For the uninitiated, this Italian-American co-production was the very first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s legendary sci-fi novel. The filmmaking method here was a masterclass in low-budget, cross-continental compromise:
- Convince the legendary Vincent Price to fly to Rome to play a depressed, garlic-hanging scientist because he loves the book.
- Hire an Italian crew who barely speak English, shoot the entire “Los Angeles” apocalypse in a quiet suburb of Rome, and hope nobody notices the European architecture and the abundance of tiny Fiat cars.
- Keep the budget so incredibly low that your “last man on earth” has to drive the exact same station wagon for the entire film, even after it gets shot up.
The result? The Last Man on Earth (1964).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
A terrible global plague has swept across the earth, killing everyone and reanimating them as slow-moving, flesh-seeking, garlic-hating vampires. Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only human who is naturally immune.
By day, Morgan has a very busy, very depressing chore routine: he makes wooden stakes in his garage, hangs fresh garlic on his doors, hunts down sleeping vampires in nearby houses, drives a stake through their hearts, and dumps them in a massive, perpetually burning pit.
By night, he locks himself in his heavily fortified house, pours himself a large glass of whiskey, puts on some jazz records, and tries to ignore his former best friend, Ben Cortman, who stands outside his door every night with a bunch of other ghouls, gently scratching at the wood and moaning: “Mooor-gaaan… come out!”
It is basically a movie about a man dealing with the worst neighbors in human history, while trying to maintain his sanity with a 9-to-5 routine of daily vampire-murder.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Blue-Collar Apocalypse: The absolute best part of this movie is how boring Morgan finds the end of the world. Staking vampires isn’t an epic, action-packed struggle—it is a dull, tedious chore. Price’s facial expression while driving stakes into chests is the exact same face a middle-aged man makes when he is cleaning out his rain gutters on a Sunday morning.
- The Weakest Monsters in History: These vampires do not fly, they do not turn into bats, and they can barely walk. They look like tired factory workers who are holding a very quiet, polite strike outside Morgan’s house. You could easily escape them by walking at a brisk pace, which makes Morgan’s deep psychological terror even funnier.
- The Direct Link to George Romero: Without this movie, Night of the Living Dead would not exist. Romero openly admitted that he didn’t invent the modern zombie—he just watched The Last Man on Earth, copied these exact slow-moving, house-besieging, flesh-seeking ghouls, and called them “zombies” instead of vampires.
- Vincent Price’s Peak Melodrama: Nobody does theatrical, Shakespearean grief like Vincent Price. Watching him laugh hysterically in despair while watching a home movie of his dead family is an absolute masterclass in high-key acting.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is easily the most faithful and atmospheric adaptation of I Am Legend ever made. Despite the low budget and the sometimes goofy Italian dubbing, the black-and-white cinematography is incredibly moody, and the sense of absolute, crushing isolation is genuinely creepy. It is slow, it is bleak, and it is a classic for a reason.
My Rating: 4 out of 5 freshly sharpened wooden stakes made with a lathe in a suburban garage.
Wanna see the godfather of post-apocalyptic survival?
Dim the lights, grab a clove of garlic just in case, and search for this classic on your favorite public domain video platform. Because the copyright was never properly renewed, you can watch Vincent Price battle the undead for free, legally, and in glorious, shadowy high-contrast black-and-white.
[WATCH “The Last Man on Earth (1964)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
