I Am Legend

I am Legend was a big hit in 2007; many people may not know that in 1964 Vincent Price stared in The Last Man on Earth. These both are movies based on the novel by Richard Matheson, I am Legend in 1954. There are as many differences in the telling of these stories as there are similarities. These two men are thrown into a maddening and terrifying situation. How they handle living in a world full of chaos and monster, reason and humanity has all but abandoned them. The movies The Last Man on Earth and I am Legend show how different decades and different men make different decisions in the same situation.

In 1964 Vincent Price stared in the move adaptation of the novel I am Legend, The Last Man on Earth. He plays a man named, Robert Martin. The movie with Martin narrating what is happening as he goes through his day-to-day chores and activities. The audience is unaware of the horror that Martin is living with. The audience quickly learns that Martin is out in the neighborhood looking for supplies to survive and hunting vampires. He takes the dead bodies of the vampires to a giant burning pit to dispose of them. Martin locks himself up in his home every night, where he has boarded up all the windows. The vampires come for him, screaming out his name and trying to get him out of his house so they can feed on the last living human alive. Martin watched his wife turn into a vampire, one night she shows up at the house and tries to kill him. He must instead kill her. Martin decides to study the vampire illness and starts trying to concoct a cure after realizing that he cannot be affected by the vampires. He runs into a woman, named Ruth and finds out that she has a serum that can contain the vampire in her, but not cure it completely. As he is caring for Ruth, Martin finds out the other vampires, those who created the serum, as sent her to kill him. Martin was seen as a threat, since he had been out killing all the vampires that he could find. Martin takes the serum...