There was no idea too strange for Rod Serling, but few plots fascinated the creator of “The Twilight Zone” more than the notion of what would happen to the last man on Earth.
From “Where Is Everybody?” (the first Twilight Zone episode) through the memorable “Time Enough at Last” and on to the script for “Planet of the Apes,” which Serling co-wrote, the master of a place that is both shadow and substance returned again and again to this story.
Unlike his protagonists, Serling was not alone. One-man-alone stories begin back at the beginning, with the book of Genesis, but their modern shape can be traced to Daniel Defoe and “Robinson Crusoe.”
The fascination with the idea continues to this day as Will Smith becomes the latest last man alive in “I Am Legend,” the third big-screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel, which drew a whopping $76.5 million over the weekend.
“We return to this story because it is one of the most fundamental fears anyone can have,” says Walter Rank- in, an associate dean at George Mason University. “In last-man stories, there is sometimes an initial feeling of joy, of absolute freedom, and then they find that they want human company.”
The notion that humans need companionship is best illustrated by almost no last-man story actually being about the last man. Almost always there is a man Friday, although in movies, Friday is almost always a remarkably attractive woman.
Almost always there are a group of mutants, vampires or hippies (depending upon the era) out in the wilderness that once was a city. And almost always these movies lose steam once those folks are found.
One film from more than 20 years ago is “The Quiet Earth,” a 1985 movie with Bruno Lawrence as Zac Hobson, the sole survivor (or so he believes) of a corporate project gone terribly wrong that has wiped out the rest of humanity.
Hobson’s descent into madness is fascinating, and when he assembles mannequins as an audience and gives a speech from the balcony of a mansion, his loneliness is palpable.
A similar scene takes place in “The Omega Man,” the second filming of “I Am Legend,” when Robert Neville (played by Charlton Heston) sits in an empty theater watching “Woodstock” and quoting the lines of an idealistic concertgoer.
Serling made the most direct examination of the subject in “Where Is Everybody?” — in which he follows the exploits of a man alone in a town. The twist is that he is an Air Force pilot placed in an isolation booth for 484 hours as a study of how astronauts will react on their way to the moon.
At the thumping heart of most of these stories, including the first two adaptations of “I Am Legend,” is the notion that we have become too clever for our own good.
We’ve built bombs powerful enough to destroy us all if we use them. We have cured diseases but can’t be certain that someone hasn’t created a virus that will wipe out humanity the minute it escapes from its cage.
“There are certain periods of time when these movies work,” says Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies at the University of Buffalo. “They explore the fear that something catastrophic is going to happen. They are a form of sociopolitical horror movie about the fear that society is coming to an end.”
