This severely underrated Vincent Price flick is the first film version of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend."
And I don't know why more people don't know about it.
Price does an amazing job with the depressing day-to-day existance of the last man on an earth overrun by vampires/zombies. He spends the majority of the film reacting with nothing to play off of, but you really get a sense for the hopelessness of his existance. He lives simply to keep on living, and he doesn't know why.
Stark and minimalistic, the film goes for the jugular without ever resorting to histronics. Even the deaths of Price's wife and daughter are handled with a bleak, resigned dignity.
And for the film historians in the crowd, this movie was made *four years* before Night of the Living Dead. Yet you can see its influence in some of the most memorable scenes of NotLD, as well as in every zombie movie that's been made to date.
Creepy and absorbing. Check out this overlooked classic.
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