How to Stake Your Neighbors and Still Make Dinner on Time

In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, we shuffle through the empty streets of The Last Man on Earth (1964), the Vincent Price classic that adapted Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend on a budget that looked like it was borrowed from the props department’s coffee fund. Price stars as Dr. Robert Morgan, the sole survivor of a plague that’s turned humanity into a shambling horde of vampires — though these vampires mostly stand outside his house half-heartedly groaning, as if waiting for a pizza delivery that never comes.

I’ll walk you through Morgan’s monotonous daily routine: gathering supplies, stringing garlic, hammering stakes into neighbors, and recording sad monologues into a tape recorder like the world’s loneliest podcaster. Along the way, we’ll admire how Price manages to elevate endless scenes of routine with sheer gravitas, making garlic shopping sound like Shakespeare.

We’ll also cover the tragic reveal of Morgan’s lost family, the arrival of other “survivors” who aren’t quite what they seem, and the bleak finale that underlines the title: he really is the last man, though not in the way he thinks.

It’s moody, it’s low-budget, and it’s the blueprint for every apocalyptic vampire and zombie movie that followed.