Customer Reviews

Vincent Price Double Feature: The Last Man on Earth/House on Haunted Hill

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I saw this movie in the early 1960s, in the Star theater in Lebanon, Missouri. They ran coming attractions, then a B movie, followed by a cartoon, and then the A movie. Continuously, from open till close.

And you could stay in the theater as along as you liked. All for 25 cents. Milk Duds were a dime. So parents would drop their kids off unescorted for 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday, and in those days it was safe to do so.

This was a scary movie for me at the time, and it scared my little brother so bad he couldn't sleep for most of 4 days after. He still remembers the terror, 40-odd years later.

Okay, we were kids then, and this movie is definitely dated compared to today's buckets of splattering gore, but this wasn't your usual Vincent Price movie. He does what he has to do to survive, but he's so lonely. And he misses his family so much. And the zombies are just waiting for him to screw up so they can kill him. It's actually a little sad.

So if you're a horror fan and a film buff, you should definitely watch this one. Because, although not well known, it's one of the classics. Buy a box of Milk Duds too.

Vincent Price brings a thespian elegance to everything he does, especially "The Last Man on Earth," which is basically a soliloquy for the first half of the film (except for the flashback sequence, which effectively conveys the back-story through the use of a newspaper clipping). Adding to the eerie atmosphere are the B&W cinematography, vintage 1960s cars, and the deserted streets of Rome (where the movie was filmed). The zombies predate "Night of the Living Dead" and are said to have inspired George Romero. Both movies are decent prints reasonably free from artifacts and not too dark, which makes this budget double-feature from Acme DVD Works something of a bargain, although the Midnite Movies double-feature, while a little more expensive, has a nice pairing of "The Last Man on Earth" with "Panic in the Year Zero" starring Ray Milland---another end-of-the-world epic that carries on the post-apocalyptic theme. UPDATE 8/09: I've recently had the opportunity to see the new colorized version of "The Last Man on Earth" from Legend Films. While the restoration was meticulously done, it does lose a little bit of creepiness in color. On the other hand, the enhancements are subtle and reasonably natural (and it comes with the original B&W version), making this a good alternative to consider too.

It is blasphemy to suggest that because Vincent Price is an actor in these films that anything about the film suggests the art and genius behind good Shakespearean theater. What is true is that Vincent Price's talents were wasted on these scripts.