XxiiiStudios.com

The History of “I Am Legend”

Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, “I Am Legend” stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 sci-fi novel. In what is to a considerable extent a solo turn as the last healthy human on a post-plague planet Earth, Will Smith strongly holds the screen in a one-man Alamo besieged by marauding cannibals. Potent B.O. looms worldwide.

Matheson’s pioneering novel, which worked a lot of science into a story populated by vampiric predators, hasn’t fared too well on the bigscreen thus far. First adaptation, the 1964 Vincent Price starrer “The Last Man on Earth,” lensed in Italy by helmer Sidney Salkow, was a cheesy affair, while the 1971 “The Omega Man,” toplining Charlton Heston under Boris Sagal’s direction, murkily altered the story to put the leading man up against an albino cult called “the Family.” A direct-to-vid item called “I Am Omega” (from the Asylum, specialists in parasitic low-budget versions of big-budget studio fare) has just been produced.