I Am Legend

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from I am Legend)

I Am Legend is a 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson about the last man alive in Los Angeles. He actually lives in a suburb of what was then a not-so-built-up metropolis.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book takes place in the then-future of 1976–1979, and opens with the monotony and horror of the daily life of the protagonist, Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the only survivor of an apocalypse caused by a pandemic of a bacterium the symptoms of which are very similar to vampirism. He lives in a house fortified against nocturnal attacks by the roaming infected, and sallys forth by daylight to kill the sleeping vampires. Every day he also makes repairs to his house, boarding up windows, stringing and hanging garlic, and disposing of vampires' corpses on his lawn.

Neville's psychological disposition is a significant element in the novel, and his struggles with despair imbue the character with intensity and gravitas. The author emphasizes that he is an ordinary, flawed man trying to deal with an extraordinary catastrophe.

Much of the story is devoted to Neville's struggles to understand the plague that has transformed everyone he meets except for himself, and the novel details the progress of his discoveries. In this regard, the novel is unique in vampire fiction in that instead of asking the reader to accept a supernatural explanation for vampire phenomena, the author strives to offer scientific bases for such symptoms as aversion to garlic, craving of fresh blood, and resistance to bullets but vulnerability to stakes and sunlight. The aversion to mirrors and crosses (or, in the case of one vampire of Jewish origin, the Torah) is classified as psychological.

Eventually, Neville discovers that while he is the only person immune to the bacterium, he is not the only one still alive. Others who have been infected have discovered a means to hold the disease at bay. However, during the daylight hours, they appear to be fully involved vampires. Thus, along with the vampires, he has been killing these still alive persons. He becomes a source of terror to the still living, since he can go abroad in daylight (which they can't) and leaves their dead behind. Just as vampires were regarded as a legendary monster that preyed on the vulnerable humans in their beds, Neville has become the last of a dead breed; a mythical figure that kills both vampires and the infected living while they are sleeping. He becomes a legend as the vampires once were, hence the title.

[edit]

Film adaptations

I Am Legend has twice been filmed, though the films are generally regarded by critics as having been very poor adaptations:

  • 1964: The Last Man on Earth (Italian film, original 1963 title L'Ultimo Uomo Della Terra) Matheson wrote the screenplay for this adaptation, but later rewrites were so changed that he did not wish his name to appear in the credits. The pseudonym "Logan Swanson" appears instead. The film starred Vincent Price.
  • 1971: The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe. Matheson had no influence on the screenplay for this film, and it deviates from the book in several ways, particularly in removing any vampirical elements. Taking place in a similar time-period as that of the novel, the movie revolves around Colonel Robert Neville (played by Heston), an apparently lone survivor of a biological war between China and Russia battling against infected albino mutants. Heston portrays a military biomedical researcher who escapes infection by injecting himself with an experimental vaccine. Zerbe is Matthias, a messianic leader who organizes the infected into "the Family" and aims to destroy the remnants of the previous world. Neville drives around during the day killing the infected, who are extremely photosensitive, while at night holed up in a townhouse full of weapons and modern conveniences. After he discovers a small group of young survivors, he attempts to develop a serum from his own immune blood that will save them from reaching the final "tertiary" stage of the disease. It has been suggested that the film parallels the story of Christ, the Apostles, and the Crucifixion. Template:Uncited. The "omega" in the title references the final letter in the Greek alphabet, which is also connected to Christ, who was referred to as the Alpha and Omega.

A new adaptation of the film, directed by music video director Francis Lawrence and written by Mark Protosevich has been announced and is slated for release in 2007.

Further films inspired by I Am Legend include:

  • 1968: Night of the Living Dead directed and written by George Romero, who acknowledges the initial idea for which was drawn from Matheson's book. The movie has spawned numerous sequels and clones.
  • 1984: Night of the Comet concerns the survivors of a mass extinction resulting from a comet's close sweep to Earth. The survivors are split between those unaffected by the comet and and those who have been transformed into murderous, zombie-like creatures.
  • 2002: 28 Days Later, by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle which takes the zombie movie template established by Romero. However, 28 Days Later does not feature the traditional slow-moving reanimated corpses of most zombie films, but does feature outright murderous, angry hordes of what are essentially infected, but not undead, people; the "infected" in Boyle's film share such qualities with the vampires in I Am Legend.
[edit]

Other influences

Music:

  • The pop/disco brother trio the Bee Gees recorded a song called "Omega Man". However, despite certain lyrics that give hints of such, the song has nothing to do with either the movie or the original novel.
  • The Police recorded a song called "Omegaman" (listed on the album as "Ωmegaman"), penned by guitarist Andy Summers, for their 1981 album Ghost in the Machine. Although the lyrics evoke themes similar to those presented in the movie and the novel, there is no direct reference to either work.
  • The heavy metal band White Zombie recorded a song called "I Am Legend" that appears on their La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1 album. This song is generally considered to be about the book of the same name.
  • In 2005, the Swedish Death Metal band Arch Enemy released their album Doomsday Machine, featuring the song "I Am Legend/Out For Blood", inspired by the novel.
  • In 2001, the Italian Black metal band Stormlord released their album "At The Gates Of Utopia", with song entitled "I Am legend", inspired by the novel.

Television and film:

  • "The Homega Man", a segment on a Halloween episode of The Simpsons parodied The Omega Man, in which Homer Simpson survived a French neutron bomb attack to apparently become the last man on Earth.
  • The video game series Resident Evil, which was adapted into two full-length movies, with two more planned, owes a great deal to the book.
  • The 1998 Channel 4 miniseries Ultraviolet takes similar elements from the book, treating vampirism as an infection, and the associated supernatural elements as superstitions.
  • The 2006 similarly named UltraViolet movie has an infected "super human" vampire battling against a government that created her.
[edit]

External links

it:Io sono leggenda

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/I_Am_Legend"