Your favorite post-apocolyptic movie?

[Azlan]

The Last Man on Earth is an old movie. (It's in B&W, right?) Which is surprising, because its premise – a lone man surviving in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by vampires – seems like something that was made up within the past 20 years or so. But, no, that movie was based on Richard Matheson's novella, "I Am Legend", which was first published in the 1950s. The movie came out about 10 years later.

I saw a lot of post-apocalpyse sci-fi movies on TV, when I was growing up. The Last Man on Earth, I first saw when I was around 8 or 9 years old. Then I saw Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, which has a premise a lot like The Last Man on Earth's. I was around 10 years old when I saw Heston in Planet of the Apes, and the final scene of that movie left an indelible mark in my memory and imagination.

I've been fascinated with post-apocalypse sci-fi ever since.

 

[KaosDevice]

Then I saw Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, which has a premise a lot like The Last Man on Earth's. I was around 10 years old when I saw Heston in Planet of the Apes, and the final scene of that movie left an indelible mark in my memory and imagination.

The Omega Man is based on the Richard Matheson story 'I am Legend' I'm not sure if The Last man on Earth was or not. There was a pretty high cheese factor in The Omega Man, I'd like to see a remake that took itself more seriously (as, in fact the story does).

Just as an aside, it seems to me that post-apocolyptic fiction was more popular during the cold war era and with the fall of the Berlin Wall has been on something of a low burner ever since. Sad, because as J.G. Ballard shows, there can be all sorts of armeggedons.

 

[Azlan]

The Omega Man is based on the Richard Matheson story 'I am Legend' I'm not sure if The Last man on Earth was or not.

Maybe they're both based on the novella, "I Am Legend"? But I re-read the novella recently, and I recall The Last Man on Earth following the plot more closely than The Omega Man did. (Then again, it has been a long time since I last saw either movie.)

 

[Rackhir]

Maybe they're both based on the novella, "I Am Legend"? But I re-read the novella recently, and I recall The Last Man on Earth following the plot more closely than The Omega Man did. (Then again, it has been a long time since I last saw either movie.)

They are both based on the novella.

Spoilers

Spoiler

The only real change between "Last Man on Earth" and the original novella was the end, where in the story he was going to be executed by the vampire society that had arisen and he realizes that he has become the boogieman for the new society, the horror that the parents will use to frighten their children with. Thus the title "I am Legend".

I get the impression that Omega man was influenced by Heston's NRA sympathies (all the guns, which were useless in the original story) and the ending was considerably different with the overt Christ imagery and "cure" through his blood. There was no "cure" in the novella, the vampires had become the new society and humanity was extinct

 

[sniffles]

All the discussion of I Am Legend reminds me of a post-apocalyptic short story I read once that was obviously inspired by Matheson's tale. I can't remember the title or author, though. But all the adults but one had been killed by a plague, and the children had turned into feral monsters who wanted to kill the adult. Sort of a mix of I Am Legend and "Miri" from the original Star Trek.

 

[Rackhir]

All the discussion of I Am Legend reminds me of a post-apocalyptic short story I read once that was obviously inspired by Matheson's tale. I can't remember the title or author, though. But all the adults but one had been killed by a plague, and the children had turned into feral monsters who wanted to kill the adult. Sort of a mix of I Am Legend and "Miri" from the original Star Trek.

Did it feature a head that had managed to survive the apocalipse that was turned off at the end of the story.

Here's an interesting web site that I found recently. It's a bibliography with synopsis for post nuclear war stories.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/nuclear/a.htm#A

 

[Mark CMG]

Favorites?

28 Days Later
The Bed-Sitting Room
A Boy and His Dog
The Day After
Delicatessen
Five
The Omega Man (I agree it could use a remake.)
On the Beach
The Planet of the Apes
Threads
Twelve Monkeys
Zardoz

Others? (Were these mentioned and I missed them?)

Logan's Run
Mindwarp
Prototype
The Sisterhood
World Gone Wild

 

[Villano]

Road Warrior
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Judge Dredd
Omega Man
Last Man On Earth
The Planet of the Apes films (excluding the remake)
Hell Comes To Frogtown
Vampire Hunter D
Steel Dawn
Cyborg
Matrix (just the first)
The Day The World Ended
Teenage Caveman (the '50s original)
Battlefield: Earth (I like it because it's so bad)

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

I noticed no one mentioned The Postman...

Yet another case of a good novel made into a really bad movie- which threw out half of the plot of the book (including the most interesting parts), failed to explain the background- and even neglected to mention that the whole darn thing took place in Oregon...

Anyway, David Brin wrote the book as a response to "Road Warrior" and "Atlas Shrugged" type apocalyptic fantasies- which he sees as immature, immoral and misanthropic. It's sort of an anti-apocalypse novel, in a similiar (but strangely reversed) fashion to Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream", Spinrad's takedown of high fantasy.

 

[Reynard]

Six String Samurai: Part Road Warrior, Part Kirosawa, and Part Elvis Movie.