Recent viewings:

The Omega Man (1971). (Discussed previously).

Some people find Charlton Heston scary, I am told. I'd agree that his character in this adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is rather scary. But then again, he's supposed to be.

Robert Neville is the lone unaffected survivor of a plague that has either killed or radically transformed the rest of the human race. The other survivors of this plague have been transformed into grotesque vampire-like beings. Neville lives alone in a heavily-fortified house, amusing himself with recorded music and a stockpile of liquor at night and going out by day to cruise the deserted city in search of supplies to take home and dormant vampires to kill.

There are some amusing botches in this low-budget production. Most obvious are the mistakes in the opening sequence, an otherwise effective montage of Neville driving a giant 1970s convertible through deserted city streets. Unfortunately, the streets were not as deserted as they should have been. At one point a person can be seen idly strolling down the sidewalk in the background, and at another point I seem to recall seeing other cars moving in the distance. (This is, I suppose, the kind of thing that could be removed with a whisk of a digital eraser nowadays. Things were more difficult in days gone by.) In another sequence, it's rather obvious that the stuntman driving a motorcycle has only a vague resemblance to Heston.

Despite the appalling production standards, the movie does effectively convey the mental and emotional stress that Neville is under. It's believable when a sweaty, snarling Heston grabs a gun and starts blasting away at the "vampires" besieging his fortified house with a ferocious, animalistic glee that suggests that, despite his desperate clinging to classical music and other emblems of civilization, he is no longer a civilized human being. After all, what's the point in being civilized when the only civitas consists of creatures that want to kill you? His only conversational companion other than himself is an ornamental bust of a male head adorned with an incongruous hat. He's not much help. This is a man being pushed over the edge, not just of civilization, but of sanity.

Fortunately for Neville, he eventually encounters another apparently unaffected survivor, a young black woman (Rosalind Cash). You know the old saying "if you were the last man/woman on earth?" Well, not too surprisingly, after surprising each other in a derelict department store and convincing each other that they're not vampires in disguise, these two find solace in each other's company. And Neville seems to regain some of the humanity that he's apparently lost. But, of course, there are complications.

I wonder: when this movie was produced and released, was it seen as daring and progressive to portray a relationship between an icon of Anglo-Saxon masculinity like Heston and an attractive, athletic black woman?

Unfortunately, the movie at this point veers away from Matheson's bleak little masterpiece. Instead of the background and motivation which Matheson supplied for the woman, the movie supplies her with a bevy of other unaffected young survivors who welcome Neville's offer of medical help. Also, apparently for the sake of giving the audience an identifiable individual villain to hate, the movie introduces a head vampire who has turned his altered followers into a parody of a technology-hating, knowledge-hating religious cult. To the best of my knowledge, this is not found in Matheson's original book, in which the chaotic, orgiastic behavior of the transformed humans who besieged his house every night was part of the reason why Neville's revulsion against them and his murderous hunt for their daylight resting places were so understandable.

There are other plot changes which I will refrain from describing for the sake of spoilers. Suffice it to say that instead of Matheson's ending, which leads his Neville to utter the Miltonic last line (and title) of the book, the screenwriters have substituted a more hopeful ending with Neville transformed into a Christ figure whose blood, literally, redeems humanity. This is signalled in a manner so unsubtle that it provokes laughter, rather than reverence or respect. I wish they'd simply left Matheson's story alone to stand on its own merits. No doubt some Hollywood suit decided that he wanted a happy ending. Let's hope that someone, someday, has the guts to film it the way Matheson wrote it.