The End Has Come: Standing Alone as ‘The Last Man on Earth’

Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I Am Legend is among the most enduring, flexible, and durable stories in all of horror. It continues to be remade in both official and unofficial capacities with each generation giving Richard Matheson’s seminal novella its own unique twist suited to its current fears. The first, and to date most faithful, adaptation of I Am Legend is The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price in the central role of Robert Morgan. Ironically, this adaptation was disowned by its original creator for several reasons and, though it is the oldest filmed version of the story, perhaps rings truest to us today over sixty years after its making.

Richard Matheson was first hired by England’s Hammer Studios to write a screenplay based on his novella. Unfortunately, the script he turned in was blocked by the British censors who, Hammer believed, were keeping an extra strict eye on them after the release of their gory (for the time) but also highly successful film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). Hammer would recycle the title of that screenplay, Night Creatures, and place it on a very different film some years later, but the screenplay itself was acquired by American independent producers Robert L. Lippert and Harold E. Knox. The script was also extensively rewritten by William F. Leicester who streamlined the story and made several changes to the dialogue. As a result, Matheson petitioned the Writers Guild to have his name removed from the film. They responded that he would not receive any residuals for the film if he did that, so instead he created the pseudonym Logan Swanson.

The changes in the screenplay were not the only objections Matheson expressed. He was also opposed to the casting of Vincent Price as the lead character, whose name change from Robert Neville was not the only difference from I Am Legend and Night Creatures. Price was, with only a few exceptions in the 40s and early 50s, a rather recently minted horror icon in the early 60s when The Last Man on Earth began filming. Most of his career had been spent in dramas, westerns, and noir films with occasional forays into horror like The Invisible Man Returns (1940) and House of Wax (1953). This all changed in the late 50s after he was “greylisted” by HUAC and found it increasingly difficult to find studio work. This was not a problem, however, for independent renegades like William Castle and James H. Nicholson, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and Roger Corman at American International Pictures who recognized his worth as a star—and his willingness to work for what they could pay. Though Matheson had seen Price cast in films he wrote before, he felt he was more suited to play buttoned-up, erudite types and, more importantly, too old for . But the producers saw the success of films like (1958), (1959), and (1960) and knew they had their star.