First adaptation, the 1964 Vincent Price starrer “The Last Man on Earth,” lensed in Italy by helmer Sidney Salkow, was a cheesy affair, while the 1971 “The Omega Man,” toplining Charlton Heston under Boris Sagal’s direction, murkily altered the story to put the leading man up against an albino cult called “the Family.”
Previously done as the 1964 Vincent Price film "The Last Man on Earth" and then as "The Omega Man" in 1971 starring Charlton Heston, the story is about a lone man living in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by some nasty germs and their living dead victims (vampire type beings the first time around, zombies with the second).
Vincent Price first played the role in 1964's "The Last Man on Earth" and Charlton Heston took it on in 1971's "The Omega Man."
Based pretty loosely on the Richard Matheson classic, it was already filmed in 1964 as “The Last Man on Earth” and in 1971 as “The Omega Man.”
A handful of adaptations of the book have already been made, including 1964’s cheesy “The Last Man on Earth,” starring Vincent Price, and the 1971 Charlton Heston vehicle “The Omega Man.”
First adapted to screen in 1964 as an Italian co-production called "The Last Man on Earth" and then in 1971 as "The Omega Man," "I Am Legend" has intrigued generations of readers and viewers with its musings on loneliness and implications about the disintegration of modern society.