[Premium Edition] "The Last Man on Earth / The Day of the Triffids"
This is a DVD coupling two 50s-60s sci-fi films.
"The Last Man on Earth" is a sci-fi horror film based on the novel "I Am Legend" by American horror/sci-fi writer and screenwriter Richard Matheson.
A mysterious plague has spread across the Earth, turning all of humanity into vampires who only move at night and hide underground during the day.
However, Robert Morgan is the only one who has escaped infection, living all alone in a city that has become a ghost town. The overall story follows how the last surviving human manages to survive while avoiding the vampires that appear night after night.
This work has been remade many times since, as "The Omega Man" and "I Am Legend".
However, another important work was created under the influence of this film: George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." The depiction of the swarms of vampires wandering the town at night in "The Last Man on Earth" is exactly like Romero's zombies. When I first saw it, I intuitively felt, "Romero must have been influenced by this film to create his zombies."
I don't feel this as much in the remakes of "The Last Man on Earth," such as "The Omega Man" or "I Am Legend." Only the depiction of the dead (vampires) in "The Last Man on Earth" is strangely zombie-like.
The simultaneously included "The Day of the Triffids" is a 1962 British film based on John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids."
One day, a massive meteor shower rains down on Earth, and everyone who sees it goes blind. The protagonist is the only one who avoids blindness because he was hospitalized with bandages over his eyes, but then mobile man-eating plants called Triffids appear and begin attacking the blind humans one after another.
This is also a famous apocalyptic sci-fi work, and the scenes where the Triffids attack humans in groups are also similar to the scenes where the zombies in Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" attack humans.
In other words, this DVD is intentionally packaged with the predecessor works that influenced Romero's zombies, and I suspect this is a conscious composition by someone who knows their stuff.
If you like Romero's zombies, this is a DVD you should definitely get. I don't know if that's the reason, but this disc is traded at a premium price even when used.
"The Last Man on Earth / The Day of the Triffids"
Vincent Price
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↑ The Omega Man (Prime Video)
https://amzn.to/3gM8rA2
↑ I Am Legend (Prime Video)
https://amzn.to/3sA3i0F
↑ I Am Legend (Alternate Ending)