Last Woman On Earth

MARCH 6, 2008

GENRE: POST-APOCALYPTIC
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

If there’s one thing Roger Corman doesn’t usually skip on, it’s the horror. Plot, acting, sets, all that stuff is usually an after-thought, but there will ALWAYS be a monster, some gore, a few kills... except for Last Woman On Earth. The horror stems from there being only two men and one woman left in the world (note – the other way around could be the plot of a very different and vastly more exciting type of movie), but that’s it. I was expecting maybe an insane monkey man or maybe a fish monster would also survive the apocalypse, but nope.

So what happens in the movie? Uh... nothing. Our survivors have lived because they were underwater at the time the whole world lost oxygen (must have been a pretty slow day for the scuba diving industry). As the title reminds you, there’s only one woman left, but also two guys, so naturally they both fuck her, and then whale on each other (which results in the film’s only bloodshed – a cut on the loser’s face). Granted, this IS Corman, so I wasn’t expecting scenes like the one in The Stand when they go through the tunnel (the after effects of the end of the world are shown via one guy on the ground next to his car, and another car with a dead driver crashing gently into a curb some 5-6 hours after he should have died).

And again, even for Corman, this feels entirely too cheap. Other than those two guys I mentioned, and another random corpse later on, there is literally zero evidence that anything has occurred. The editing is also choppy as hell, and the three survivors barely ever seem really concerned that they are the only ones left. If the recent I Am Legend got anything right, it was this type of stuff – the isolation and just general creepiness associated with an empty world (and based on the vampire effects, I can only assume that film had as big a budget as Corman’s). This movie is more about the “let’s sit around and yell at each other” situations of an apocalypse.

That said, it’s not without its occasional charm. Robert Towne (from the other Corman quickie that this film was filmed back to back with, the similarly 'The'-less Creature From The Haunted Sea) demonstrates an utterly bizarre way of rinsing his eyes – dipping his fingers into a freshly poured glass of Scotch and rubbing his pupils with them. He also fights the other guy over, of all things, oxygen. “Leaves need oxygen!” he shouts, as he grabs the other guy’s shirt and shakes him violently back and forth. Man loves 3rd grade science. Towne’s script also contains a precious few moments of wit – love the bit about “1/3 of the human race.”

Also the broad’s pretty hot, so it’s perfectly understandable that both guys want to nail her, what with all the other women not only dead but totally vanished from the world.

At 71 minutes, it’s a harmless enough timekiller, but the utter lack of, well, HORROR, makes it pretty disappointing. Luckily, per my own made up rule #4 (“Any film classified as horror by the IMDb is eligible”), it’s enough to get me through another day. And since it’s been out for 48 years, I imagine Mill Creek won’t make me take down the review to exert their authority.

What say you?