ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

If you're not a member of All Sci-Fi, registration is easy. Just use the registration password, which is —

gort




Attention members! If you've forgotten your password, just email me at Brucecook1@yahoo.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Here's a few interesting comments from All Sci-Fi member Phantom about a well-regarded movie I own a DVD of . . . but have never watched!

I bought it for the other movies the box set contains. I'm afraid that Zombies simply don't "float my boat" . . .


____________________________________________________________________



The Last Man on Earth

I saw this in ’64 on a double bill with some forgettable muscle man picture and didn’t like a frame of it. Avoided the movie for decades while Heston made The Omega Man (liked it even less) and Will Smith gave it a third and thoroughly disappointing try.

So, it was about time for a re-assessment, and lo and behold, Price’s journey through the landscape of the undead is much better than I remembered.

Price was on an AIP roll at the time, so how or why he ended up in Italy in an almost no-budget picture only he could have explained. We are lucky he made the decision; director Ubaldo Ragona is even more fortunate in enticing the highly respected and sought after American actor to accept the job. Price takes the role very seriously. There is none of that tongue-in-cheek approach he adopted for the latter part of his career that endeared him to his fans. In this Matheson adaptation he is world weary to the bone and deadly serious about his mission, exactly the right tone for a movie that he had to carry alone for the American audience.



Franco Delli Colli’s b/w photography gives the film a far more unearthly ambiance than the color remakes. Nightmares are meant to be in monochrome in which the eye is not distracted by a myriad of hues and shades. Mario Bava, an artistic genius, was one of the few directors to successfully marry disturbed dreams with floods of color.

This shot of a dead body, or possibly a vampire, is far more effective in b/w. Color would reveal make up and defects that never seem authentic when applied to one’s face.



Wild animals roam the empty streets in the beginning of Will Smith’s I am Legend. It’s a remarkable, memorable image, but conveys none of the unnerving devastation envisioned in The Last Man on Earth.





A few items from the IMDB pages: