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Soy leyenda (Mario Gómez Martín, 1967)
Oct
3
zombies
Robert Neville (Moisés Menéndez) looking out over an empty rooftop. DP: Jesús Ocaña.
(A favourite) zombie movie*
Now, settima. Of all the zombie movies in the world you had to pick a vampire story? Why yes. Yes I did.
“Again he shook his head. The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!”
– Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954)
Just like my actual favourite zombie film, that one from 1968, Soy leyenda is based on Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic horror novel I Am Legend (1954). The story describes a world where the living have become undead vampire-like creatures. A lone man tries to rationalise that new world through reason and science, and legend.
In the man's mind, the undead become the familiar, the vampire. In our mind, watching this, we believe to see the foreshadowing of the popculture zombie. The abandoned well-known landscapes, the ceaseless repetition of what the old life had instilled, the normalcy of the grotesque. Oh how familiar they have become.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.
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The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968)
Apr
29
The menacing Mocata (Charles Gray). DP: Arthur Grant.
– Do you realise what today's date is, Rex?
– April the, er, 29th, why?
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The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona + Sidney Salkow, 1964)
Jun
2
Republic Day – Italy
Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) walking down the stairs of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (aka the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro aka the Colosseo Quadrato), with bodies scattered around him. DP: Franco Delli Colli.
Rome's EUR was Italy's site for the 1942 World's Fair, and meant as a showcase for #Mussolini's then-20 year old fascist state. Due to the outbreak of World War 2, EUR was never used for the Fair. Instead, the Italian Republic restored the project after the war and – quite appropriately if I may say so – turned it into a business district.
“Your new society sounds charming.”
– Dr. Robert Morgan
An idealised, hypermodern interpretation of Classical Roman architecture, EUR feels alien and inhumane and serves as a perfect backdrop for the events a last man on earth may come up against.
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The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
Mar
5
National Scott Day
Scott Carey (Grant Williams) standing in a palm of someone's hand, his arms outstretched as if pleading. DP: Ellis W. Carter.
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man (1956) is an existentialist treatise.
“A strange calm possessed me. I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before – as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light.”
– Scott Carey
The Incredible Shrinking Man plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.