Before they started calling them "summer movies" or "summer blockbusters,"
summer was still a good time for major-studio releases of sensationalistic genre
stuff, and this dystopian slice of sci-fi horror, featuring Charlton Heston ... more (who was to '70s dystopian sci-fi
horror what Schwarzenegger was to become to the same of later decades) as the
last fully human survivor of a zombie-creating plague (or so he thinks until he
encounters Rosalind Cash, for a little anti-zombie interracial romance to boot),
was one of the better examples of such material. It was based on a Richard
Matheson story that had been lensed before as "The Last Man on Earth," and later was again in the
overblown Will Smith vehicle "I Am Legend."
