A devastating skirmish where China and Russia used germ warfare has wiped out the majority of the planet. These "cilia" take an ordinary human and somehow make them diseased albinos... some slowly, some nearly instantly, depending on the patient. The tagline reads "The last man alive is not alone!". That is an inaccurate statement, considering. He's actually the last uninfected man, and there's a few regular humans still very much alive... they're just all infected. Heston is searching for the nest of infected humans by day, and holed up in his old apartment by night. When he meets Lisa played by Rosalind Cash (Klute, General Hospital), he discovers that not only are there humans, but quite a few children who are just plain immune to the disease. What follows is his attempts to find a cure and save what's left of the human race.
The first on-screen interracial kiss was on the original Star Trek series in 1963. This movie was eight years later, and it seems the studios got over their reluctance in that time. This film is rated PG. The
items you might be concerned about in this film are Lisa's nudity (not only in shadow post love-making... she's not shy about shopping for clothes while standing around naked), the violence, and some curse-words.
The extremely bright-red color of the simulated blood bothered me a lot more than it should have. It looked like house paint. Maybe the effects guy didn't realize they were shooting in color, I don't know, but it especially annoyed me when Heston shot at people and it looked like they were being hit by paint-gun pellets.
The whole movie bothered me in little ways... Heston somehow miraculously surviving the death of his pilot while in a helicopter. The damn thing crash-landed in the kind of billowy fireball that signals certain death, yet seconds later he is shown six inches from the mildly burning wreckage with one unbroken bottle of vaccine nearby. Not only is it still intact, but miraculously not on fire.
What can I say, I was three years old when this movie came out... I suppose audience sophistication has improved since then.
One laugh out loud moment when Neville told Mathias that he was full of crap. I did drop my crochet hook once while working on an afghan for my daughter during the escape sequence, but other than that the movie was kind of slow... and not in a way that was building towards much.
Basically, this was a poor adaptation of the book, as it didn't follow the story at all. It was a poor movie, as there were several large plot holes and pacing problems. The acting was okay, considering the expectations of the time for this type of genre picture. If you want to collect cinematic history, or have to have all the on-screen interpretations of the same novel (don't forget the 1963 version starring Vincent Price if that's the case) then pick this up for the nice price of less than $6. If you're looking for classic horror films, I'd give it a pass. Three out of five stars.
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