Charlton Heston stars, as said, in this bizarre 1971 last man on Earth story. I believe this was the second adaptation after The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Either way, this is one of the earlier instances of the idea of following the last man on Earth, and it is I believe the most faithful adaptation of the book.
The movie begins with Charlton Heston driving through an abandoned New York, and as he gets home it is getting dark. He is attacked by a strange mob of robed figures wearing sunglasses, and they are revealed to be alterned humans. They are at war with Heston, and he uses a automatic rifle to keep them at bay while they shoot arrows and chuck spears at him. They have bizarre cultish beliefs, actions, and dialogue, and we get a strange sense of their absurdity early on. As things progress, we learn about Heston and we watch these further conflicts as well as see him meet with other real humans.
This movie is thematically and textually weird. First of all, it feels very influenced by the time from which it came. The group of night dwellers acts straight up like some drugged out cult group, very influenced by Manson and those type of recent headlines. Then, the black woman Heston falls for later is written as such a harlem queen it reads as straight up blaxsploitation, which feels a bit weird. Her nudity in the film is also strange, as it would otherwise contain no objectionable content whatsoever. It's got a strange atmosphere going, that's for sure.
I feel like I barely said anything about this, but I want to wrap it up. The movie moves quickly and it has some thrills and scares, but the dialogue and the tones it imparts are sometimes off. Heston does a great job and there is certainly enough to give it a watch if you haven't before. And it's in the spirit of Halloween, so there.
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