Matheson Is Legend, (And So Are Price, Heston, And Smith)

Now that I have seen I Am Legend I feel the need to compare and contrast the evolution of the story. Thanks to Gandry, who has actually read the book, he’ll help keep me on the straight and narrow. This story has evolved over time and spawned new ideas as well. It all begins with the novel, I Am Legend, written by Richard Matheson in 1954. To quote Gandry (from a prior eMail), “The story actually is about the monotonous day-to-day life of Neville, which suffers because he has learned how to survive so well.. Along with that, his battle with insanity, loneliness, and his will to live, which is a puzzle to him in a world that has stacked the deck against humans...” The book takes place in Southern California of the late 70’s, after a plague mostly wipes out humanity. The antagonists (or “bad guys” if you will) are vampires and a small group of infected that have not lost their humanity, called the “still living.” Neville hunts the undead, while they sleep during the day, never realizing a difference in the groups. The “still living” are terrified of him and send a woman, Ruby, to spy on him, who is then captured by Neville. He learns the nature of the “still living” through her and their fear of him. Eventually they attack Neville and take him back to their lair, intending to execute him. The woman gives Neville suicide pills so he won’t suffer and it eventually dawns on him that he has become the terror that Vampires once represented to humans. At his death he has become a Legend to the new society of the “Still Living.”

This book has some firsts on the sci-fi/horror genre. To quote Wikipedia, it “popularized the fictional concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to a disease.” A fairly powerful and oft repeated back drop in many sci-fi movies. 12 Monkeys jumps to mind here. Director George Romero, having read the book and seen the 1964 version, “The Last Man On Earth,” was greatly influenced for his 1968 movie, “Night Of The Living Dead.” And both undead genres, vampires and zombies, have been reinvented and retold countless times since, with such examples as Blade and Resident Evil series, 28 Days/Weeks Later, Vampire Hunter D, Blackula, “... Of The Dead” titles, The Lost Boys, Buffy, Evil Dead series, Bio-Zombie, From Dusk Till Dawn, Versus, 30 Days Of Night, Ultraviolet, and even Ghosts Of Mars taps into some of the Zombie mythology. I point this out because I’m interested in what ideas spark further ideas.

The Last Man On Earth is the first attempt, in 1964, by Hollywood to put the book on the big screen, with Vincent Price no less. I'm going to have to get this movie. Since I haven't seen it I'll bring you to the second try, Charleton Heston's "The Omega Man," from 1971. A cult classic, but viewed from today comes off very campy. This movie picked up some of the books ideas but did their own thing. Robert Neville in this movie has a mass amount of hardware to put the National Guard to shame and flippantly uses it to off the near-undead cultists that bother him. These cultists are the only villains, no actual Vampires, and refer to themselves as "The Family." These humans appear to be mutant albinos with light-sensitivity that are slowly being killed off by the biological agents that killed the rest of humanity much quicker. The cultist, much like the "still living" of the book, retained their humanity but feel their survival by mutation is the next evolution of humanity, brought on by the evils of the 20th century. To them Neville represents the old "technological" world that led to the germ warfare used in the conflict between Russia and China. When "The Family" tries to execute Neville he is rescued by a woman, Lisa, living in the outskirts of town, with some children and her brother. When queried why she hasn't shown her face until now she replies that they were staying out of the hunt between Neville and The Family. She, and her brother, used to be members but didn't like the direction The Family was headed so she left. I have problems here because she isn't a mutant, but her brother is turning into one. It's a week part of the story, but gets Neville talking to humans again instead of the mannequin in his house. Neville is immune because he's an Army Doctor who tried an experimental serum that saved him, after a badly filmed helicopter accident. He then uses his blood to find a way to reverse the plague and save humanity, right before he is stupidly shot by the cult and bleeds out in a fountain. The girl, her brother, and the children live on. Yeah. As I pointed out in a previous blog, The Family has got to be the inspiration for the cult in the game Dead Rising.

36 years later Will Smith takes on the role, and I Am Legend hits theaters. This is a much more engaging movie and does everything right (with small exceptions) that The Omega Man did wrong. I believed Smith's Neville was fighting for survival every day. His dog was the one companion that kept him sane, and he had a singular obsession with developing a cure, like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. He's a soldier and a survivor, so in his mind its his duty to turn the undead mutations back into humans and resume living on the Earth. IAM handles this idea so much better that TOM did. However, since the title of the movie shares the books title you would expect things to be a little more accurate to the novel. Still no vampires. No cultists either but humans degenerated in zombie like things that ought to be scary but due to CG used to create them, come of as something unreal. They actually filmed abandoned New York City in the real not-so-abandoned New York City and it looked great, but the bad guys, the reason to be afraid of the dark were CG puppets. But that's my only real complaint. The plague is changed to be a genetically engineered virus that goes haywire, which is a fear today as opposed to biological WMDs, which was more a Cold War fear. The lady (in this movie, named Anna) that saves Neville in TOM also saves Neville in IAM, just more dramatically. And she's used to show how far he's slipped psychologically when talking with her, something TOM didn't really try. Heston's Neville hit that ass though, Smith's Neville didn't have time because those stupid Zombie things attacked. The setting being in NYC as opposed to LA also fits. As we learned in Escape From New York, you can section off NYC from the rest of the world, it just doesn't help in IAL's case. And, once again, Neville sacrifices himself to get a serum to the lady to save humanity, and all ends right as she finds the fabled Zion, last human city against the machines... Oops, wrong movie... as finds a human settlement in Vermont. Neville then becomes a Legend to the human race as it's savior, a quantum shift from what the book wanted.

In seeing this I was actually really interested in Anna, who had her son in tow. Where Neville had a complete city and its arsenal at his disposal, not to mention military training, Anna had a boat, a pistol, some UV weapon thing (like Blade I imagine), and her son Ethan. They survived pretty well on the move, and I would have like to see what the rest of the country was like to survive in. Even a side story of how people try to survive in Upstate New York would be interesting as a pilgrimage to Vermont is undertaken. Did Anna drive from NYC to Vermont in one day? How did she get across the Hudson? Probably her boat, but there was more there that could have been added.

There are an amazing number of ways to interpret the story but a couple things remained intact. A microscopic plague of something kills most of humanity, creating a race of mutants that hate or feed of the few "regular" humans. Neville, living in America, survives day-to-day hunting the mutants and talking to himself. Neville meets a woman. He dies at the end of the story. He becomes a Legend to somebody. Doing some research for the above I ran into a reference to a movie from 1924 also titled, The Last Man On Earth. This one is about a plague, dubbed "male-itis", that kills all men over age 12. Anyone under 12 that is vaccinated becomes sterile, so no more babies and women rule the Earth. Until a man is discovered in the Ozarks and every woman on Earth begins to fight over him. This movie has its origins in a Mary Shelley novel (yes, that Mary Shelley) written in 1826, titles "The Last Man," which also has similar plague and apocalyptic wipe-out of humanity. The Last Man, along with Frankenstein, can be considered as some of the earliest work of Western Science fiction as these stories go on to influence the likes of HG Wells and Arthur C Clarke. I must admit the 20's movie sounds more like "Children Of Men" but I see a root of an idea that Richard Matheson might have picked up. I've also got to get the IAL graphic novel, if only to see if he has a dog, or not. See you next broadcast.