The Last Man on Earth (February 16th and 17th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE LAST MAN ON EARTH screens Saturday February 16th at 5:15 pm and Sunday February 17th at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

After an unstoppable plague turns everyone else into vampires, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) finds himself THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. Adapted from Richard Matheson's novel 'I Am Legend' with the (uncredited) participation of the author himself, this film version follows the source material pretty closely, and yet the author still found himself dissatisfied with the results enough to ask that he be credited under a pseudonym.

If only Matheson had been able to see ahead to future film adaptations (1971's THE OMEGA MAN and 2007's I AM LEGEND) he might have been more forgiving. While THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is by no means a perfect film, it is a pretty solid 'B' sci-fi/horror flick. Price, who has a not undeserved reputation for hammy performances, here carries almost the entire film on his shoulders with not a whiff of pork to be sniffed. Scenes of the vampires assaulting his home at night bear more than a passing resemblance to the zombie assault on the farmhouse in George A. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD a few years later, and the film's ironic downbeat ending is very much ahead of its time.

31 Days of Halloween 2012: The Abominable Dr. Phibes

An appreciation by Bob Ignizio

I'm always hesitant to name a “favorite” movie. There are so many films I enjoy a great deal for different reasons, even when the question gets narrowed down to a particular genre, that I simply don't have a definitive answer. Hypothetically, though, if some disfigured madman back from the grave had constructed a devious deathtrap and placed me in it, my only hope for escape being to give an honest answer to this question since any hint of a lie would set off the trap and kill me instantly, I think I could survive by saying THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES.

PHIBES is one of a small handful of movies I feel compelled to revisit at least once a year. It's not because I think it's the best movie ever made, or even the best horror movie ever made, but there are few films, horror or otherwise, as much fun to watch.