I Am Legend!

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is probably the scariest story I ever read. The heady blend of mundane with the bizarre, the way he scientifically accounts for the details of vampirism making it seem plausible, along with his spare engaging style make the story vivid and exciting and memorable. I read the story when I was young and never ever forgot it. I read it about the same time as I read some Lovecraft and Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, other works that blend the mundane with the horrific. But where the Doyle solves the mystery and resets you in a world of sense and order, both Lovecraft and Matheson get you off the beaten path and leave you there. In Matheson's case the path is one I greatly identify with, understand, so one I feel more strongly. Lovecraft scares my brain, while Matheson scares my soul.

That said, there have been some tasty movie adaptations of the story. The first time I owned and read it was when it was tied into the Charlton Heston remake The Omega Man, a movie I think I saw in the theatre, but surely one I've owned and seen many many times since. It's not Matheson's story, it lacks the immediacy, but it's a rousing tale reasonably well told.

I read for a long time of the original film adaptation The Last Man On Earth starring Vincent Price, but none of TV stations I ever watched seem to ever show it. I didn't get to see this flick until I was in Nashville one wee morning in a motel room and some horror host show came on and they played the movie. I saw 95% of the movie that morning and liked it pretty well. Later I found it on one of those ominbus collections of cheapo horror flicks and since I've bought it a few more times. It's the truest to Matheson's story, though oddly aloof in its presentation. It's got some very scary images in it though for sure.

And then there's the recent adaptation I Am Legend with Will Smith. It's a pretty good movie, and Smith does a very fine job of getting Neville's isolation. In fact all three movies do a fine job of casting good actors who do a dandy job of getting Neville, but the other details fall by the wayside. While the vampires of the Price movie move so slowly they seem to stand still sometimes, the mutations of the Smith movie move so fast it's hard to follow the action at times. The mopey beings in the Heston movie are pretty normal but very very crazy, something we know because of their ability to talk if not reason.

After viewing all three films this past weekend in quick succession, I have to give the nod to the most convincing to Price's Last Man On Earth despite its somber pacing, and I'd give the most emotionally involving to Heston's The Omega Man for making Neville a full-blooded human being, and finally I'd give Smith's I Am Legend kudos for revealing the a real world of isolation and near madness.

Good movies all. Watch 'em.

Rip Off