Vincent Price Is Legend: The Last Man on Earth

Shot in 1964, The Last Man on Earth was the earliest screen adaptation of Richard Matheson's source novel, I Am Legend. Starring the legendary acting genius Vincent Price (who easily ranks as one of my all-time favourite actors), it's essential viewing for fans of the genre.

Robert Morgan (Price) is - apparently - the sole survivor of a terrible virus that has consumed the world's population and turned the afflicted into nocturnal zombie-vampires. Morgan spends his days hunting the creatures and his nights hiding from them - a prisoner in his own home, with nothing but alcohol and home movies for company.

This sounds incredibly similar to this year's Will Smith blockbuster, but plot points aside, it's a very different picture. For one thing, Last Man's budget is painfully low: Price's house isn't the iron-clad fortress of I Am Legend, and the creatures aren't the screaming ultra-athletic wall-scalers of the new film either – they gather at Morgan's front door and thump at it languidly, constantly calling his name like drunken noisy neighbours.

Morgan's real enemy is his own sanity - 'I can't afford the luxury of anger. Anger can make me vulnerable. It can destoy my reason and reason's the only advantage I have over them,' he says near the film's opening. He spends most of the film battling loneliness and depression. Tortured by the loss of his family, he spends his nights drinking and gloomily fashioning wooden stakes on a lathe.

Had Last Man had the luxury of a larger budget, it would easily have been a superior film to the 2008 I Am Legend – in some ways, it still is; the script is often brilliant, and while it lacks the occasionally remarkable visuals of the new movie, the final act is far more resonant and downbeat. For all their lack of menace, Last Man's pre-Night of the Living Dead zombie-vampires are no less convincing than Legend's singularly unconvincing CG efforts, and are all the more impressive when one considers that this film comes several years before Romero's seminal masterpiece.

Despite its flaws, a worthwhile film – and despite its relative obscurity it's easy to get hold of. You can buy it from Amazon here or if you're an impatient skinflint like me, you can download it free (and legally) from archive.org here.

They were afraid of me... they were afraid of me... they were afraid of me!