You won't be disappointed!

The Age of Commercialism

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Last Woman on Earth" was produced and directed by Roger Corman for American International Pictures in association with his own company, Filmgroup (one word, though an Allied Artists TV reissue spelled it as "Film Group"), and was based on a script by Robert Towne - who was also in it, more on that later. Towne went on to a distinguished career as a writer and a less distinguished one as a director - his best known credit was probably the screenplay for "Chinatown" (though Towne was disgusted when director Roman Polanski changed his ending), and he's one of the many talents both in front of and behind the camera who went from a Corman apprenticeship to a major career. "Last Woman on Earth" was apparently a project Corman threw together because he was already organizing a location trip to Puerto Rico to shoot "Creature from the Haunted Sea" and he wanted to get the most bang for his buck while there by making a second film - the way he would allow Francis Ford Coppola to shoot his first film, "Dementia 13," with the same cast and crew as his own production "The Young Racers;" and why he would squeeze two days' extra work out of Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson by finishing the 1963 version of "The Raven" early so he could make another film with them, The Terror. It helped that Towne's plot features only three on-screen (live) human characters: New York financier Harold Gern (Anthony Carbone), his wife Evelyn (Betsy Jones Moreland) and his tax attorney Martin Joyce. The performance of the actor playing Joyce is credited to "Edward Wain," but that was actually a pseudonym for ... Robert Towne. It seems that he hadn't yet finished the film by the time Corman and his crew were set to leave for Puerto Rico, so Corman had to bring him along so he could finish the script on the spot. Rather than pay for two people to come to Puerto Rico, Corman decided to save plane fare and living expenses for one by drafting Towne to play the part himself. Like Blake Edwards in Frank Wisbar's 1940's "B" "Strangler of the Swamp," Towne's performance proves that his real talent lay in writing, not acting. It also is an early indication of the flaw that would sink a lot of Towne's later major productions: a gift for pseudo-profundity which led him to write things that pretend to intellectual sophistication but really don't achieve it. One suspects that Corman told Towne, "Write me an Ingmar Bergman script - only make sure I can slap an exploitation title on it so I can sell it to the drive-ins." What Towne came up with was a profoundly uninteresting romantic triangle between Harold, Evelyn and Martin that turns into a post-apocalyptic movie when, vacationing on Puerto Rico while Harold's latest IRS investigation gets sorted out, Harold takes Evelyn and Martin deep-sea diving with SCUBA gear - and while they're underwater a sudden interruption in Earth's oxygen supply takes place, just long enough to wipe out all other humans and land-based animal life. They come to life but keep breathing through their diving masks until they realize that whatever happened to the air that annihilated the rest of humanity is over and they can once again breathe safely - and the rest of the plot deals with Harold's attempts to lord it over the other two and insist that Evelyn doesn't have sex with Martin even though she's been clearly restive in her trophy-wife status and genuinely attracted to him. The main problem with this film is that the three people are relentlessly uninteresting and we really don't like any of them. It's possible Corman could have improved this film greatly if he'd been willing to pay salary, expenses and travel for an actual actor to play Martin, and it's pretty clear whom that should have been: the young Jack Nicholson, who was under contract to Corman at the time and could have brought an explosive romantic and sexual intensity to the character that clearly eluded the writer playing him. "Last Woman on Earth" is yet another bad film in which one senses a good film struggling inside it to get out.

As the plot reads: 3 people are deep sea diving and when they resurface they find everyone in Puerto Rico dead - maybe everyone in the world. Possible spoilers below: -------------------------------------------------------------- What I did not get was the fact they were arguing over one boat/yacht. It's Puerto Rico for crying out loud! Plenty of boats and yachts around - why fight over one? The only thing I can figure out is that Martin was trying to make a point to Harold: "Harold does not own the world" (as Harold acted throughout the film). ---------------------------------------------------------------Outside of the possible spoiler the movie made perfect sense. I'm sure they were there for weeks - maybe months - so nature will take it course (one woman and two men - need I say more?). The fancy clothes they were wearing: they dress how the prefer to dress just like we all do..... and I'm sure they were trying to maintain a sense of normalcy by dressing how they prefer to dress - help to try to keep their sanity. I found each of them right and wrong - depending on which subject they were speaking on. No one is 100% right - that is realistic. The fighting? Normal. What has happened has shocked them I'm sure. To make matters worse: imagine yourself in their place - just you and two other people for MONTHS - not one other person to talk to... I'm sure they were getting on each others nerves - that is realistic. Now imagine it's your own wife (or husband) and someone else is trying to 'be with them'... I'm sure there would be plenty of people like Harold "She's my wife and not just on paper". Yes this movie is gets VERY philosophical -- one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much.8.5/10

Last Woman on Earth is a well-written post- apocalyptic science fiction, almost ruined by bad direction. The film was written by Robert Towne, who seemed to write Roger Corman's best movies. It had a very interesting conflict between the last two men on Earth fighting over the last woman. It had a some very tense scenes, with some dark humour sprinkled in. The characters, however, required very good actors to play their roles, and the acting, to be honest, sucked. The two male leads talked in an annoying Keanu Reeves-style monotone, and while the female lead was a little better, she's barely given anything to do. That, along with some weird editing choices, Corman's trademark padding, and the fact that the movie could've been way creepier, this just ended up a mildly entertaining b-movie.Roger Corman fans might find some enjoyment in this, just don't be expecting something like A Bucket of Blood.

THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH begins and ends (more or less) with a cockfight. An interesting take on end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movies, it's literate and well-acted and very well directed. The movie never loses focus, and the opening cockfight sets the tone for everything that follows; this in itself is remarkable for a low budget quickie: when was the last time one of the hundred-million-dollar bombs making the rounds these days actually seemed to have been infused with any real THOUGHT...? Screenwriter Towne and director Corman were most definitely not asleep at the wheel on this one. Carbone turns in an outstanding performance, thanks in no small part to some outstanding writing and some VERY taut direction. This one's an underrated classic if ever there WAS one.