FORMAT: DVD (REWATCH)
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(As posted on January 12th, 2010)
Roger Corman filmed Last Woman on Earth back-to-back with The Creature from the Haunted Sea. Since Corman didn’t realize there would be time to fit an additional film into his schedule, he hired screenwriter Robert Towne (who would later go on to write Chinatown) to star. That way whenever Towne wasn’t acting, he was off writing new scenes. This patchwork process didn’t do the movie any favors and hampered what could’ve been a decent flick.
An embezzler hiding out in Puerto Rico takes his wife and lawyer out scuba diving. When they return to the island, they are shocked to learn that everyone on Earth has died from some sort of airborne plague. Since they were breathing air from the scuba tanks underwater, the trio weren’t affected and as a result, they are now the only three people left in the whole world (or in Puerto Rico at least). Predictably, the lawyer gets horny and tries to steal his client’s wife away from him, which leads to various arguments and fisticuffs.
Last Woman on Earth could’ve been a potentially interesting post-apocalyptic love triangle, but Corman couldn’t quite pull it off. The laborious set-up gets the movie off to a rocky start and the flick never fully recovers. All the stuff involving the lawyer trying to hump his buddy’s wife is OK from a dramatic viewpoint but ultimately none of the characters are likable enough for you to really give two shits about them.
Corman also directed The Little Shop of Horrors, Ski Troop Attack, and The Fall of the House of Usher the same year.
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