The novel received mixed reviews at first but was influential in the development of the zombie-vampire genre and in popularizing the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease. The screenplay was written in part by Matheson, but he was dissatisfied with the result and chose to be credited as “Logan Swanson.” Filmed on a limited budget, The Last Man on Earth was shot in Italy with a predominantly Italian cast and crew. The first was The Last Man on Earth (1964) which starred Vincent Price. The Omega Man was the second adaptation of a novel by Richard Matheson called I am Legend. The scenes of Heston wandering a deserted Los Angeles, driving cars through showroom windows, going to a movie theatre and setting up the projectors to watch the documentary Woodstock over and over again just to remind himself what the world was like when it was filled with people… well, we can relate. Well, aside from the albino mutants, you can see why this film resonates with a lot of people today. At night, living atop a fortified apartment building equipped with an arsenal of weaponry, Neville is a prisoner in his own home. Struggling to maintain his sanity, he spends his days patrolling the now-desolate Los Angeles, hunting and killing members of “the Family”, a cult of plague victims who were turned into nocturnal albino mutants.

As he begins to succumb to the plague, he injects himself with an experimental vaccine, rendering himself immune.īy August, 1977, Neville believes he is the plague’s only immune survivor. (Heston), is a scientist based in Los Angeles.

A border conflict escalates into worldwide biological warfare, which kills most of the world’s population. The Omega Man was a 1971 American post-apocalyptic action film starring Charlton Heston as a survivor of a global pandemic.

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