Original I AM LEGEND Film to Screen at the Vincent Price Film Festival

The Park Theatre's River Street Theatre (RST) continues its Vincent Price Film Festival with a screening of the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 cult sci-fi/horror classic "I Am Legend." The 1964 film starring Vincent Price was re-titled The Last Man on Earth. This rarely seen gem will be shown at the RST this Saturday, June 9 at 7pm. Tickets are $5.00.

Matheson's novel has been brought to film four times, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964), The Omega Man (Charlton Heston, 1971), I Am Legend (Will Smith, 2007) and I Am Omega (2007). Additionally, in 1968, George Romero used the novel as inspiration for creating the cult classic film, Night of the Living Dead.

I Am Legend's film rights were originally sold to Great Britain's preeminent horror film company, Hammer Productions in the late 1950s. Due to the raw nature of the film, British censors would not approve the script. It was subsequently re-sold to an American producer Robert L. Lippert (producer of Vincent Price's The Fly). Lippert knew what Price could bring to the role of Dr. Robert Morgan and quickly cast him. Shot in Italy in 1963 and renamed The Last Man on Earth, the film premiered in the U.S. on March 8, 1964.

A simple high concept story, Dr. Robert Morgan is the only SURVIVOR of a global zombie epidemic. He reluctantly becomes a vampire hunter and the grim, yet campy terror begins.

Noted film criticism magazine, Film Threat, calls The Last Man on Earth, "The best Vincent Price movie."

The Austin Chronicle summarized it as "A chilling study of loneliness and an acting tour de force for Price as the last SURVIVOR of a dead race."

The Vincent Price Film Festival finishes on Saturday, June 16 with a showing of one of the most admired horror films of all time, The House on Haunted Hill.

Tickets for each film at the Vincent Price Film Festival are $5.00. More program and schedule information, as well as ticket purchases, can be found at www.riverst.org or by calling the RST Box Office (603) 532-8888. The after-hours box office can be reached by calling OvationTix at (866) 811-4111.

The River Street Theatre is located in downtown Jaffrey, New Hampshire at 6 River Street. The River Street Theatre is sponsored by Grove Street Fiduciary, Coca-Cola, the Board of Trustees of the Park Theatre, Janet S. Grant, Betty Locke, Owen Houghton and the James F. & Fernande Kelly Charitable Trust.

To post a comment, you must register and login.