I remember a twilight zone (or similar) episode where the guy wants to read all of the books but then he breaks his glasses. Futurama parodied it and his eyes fell out and his limbs fell off as well…
If it was the twilight zone - is it here:
Also are there any movies like that? Also movies/TV where every single other person is a mutant or zombie counts.
The 1985 New Zealand film The Quiet Earth, based on a novel, has the premise that a scientist played by Bruno Lawrence is the last man on Earth.
He finds the rest of NZ devoid of life, with the cities empty and ruinous. But, I hear all the Australians say, how could he tell it was any different to normal? From there it gets complicated.
Good film, Bruno Lawrence’s performance is great, and his early death was a great loss to both NZ and Australian film and TV.
Well, a sentimental old favorite anime of mine, Kurogane Communication features a girl who seems to be the last human on (post-apocalyptic) Earth; but it’s disqualified in that, there being a small number of intelligent robots left, she’s not really the last person on Earth. Unless you’re a filthy carbon chauvinist speciest.
The World The Flesh and The Devil from 1959 is my favorite post-apocalyptic film. Harry Belefonte is the last human (he thinks) until he meets up with two more people. Great film for the imagery of an empty New York.
Richard Matheson wrote the sci-fi novel I Am Legend back in 1974, a pioneering piece of the zombie apocolypse genre. So far it’s been adapted for three movies, I Am Legend, The Omega Man, and The Last Man on Earth.
There is a move called “I Am Legend” with Will Smith.
He’s not exactly the last person left on earth, but it’s very close. He’s not certain. But he lives his life as if he is the last person in New York City. There are other people, but they are all infected with a deadly “zombie” type disease.
It got a 7.2 on IMDB but I didn’t like it hardly at all - mostly because it starred Will Smith. You may want to take a look at it anyway.
There is also a much earlier B&W movie with a very similar title. I couldn’t find it and I doubt you’d want to because it was not nearly as good as the Will Smith one.
This was rated 6.1 on IMDB but I liked it more than that Will Smith movie.
It’s an English movie and it’s not exactly only one person left alive, but almost everyone is blinded by a meteor storm and there are monstrous plants roaming the world killing everyone. It’s touch and go whether people will survive. You might like this one.
Oh. I just rememebered another one. It’s called “When Worlds Collide” (1951)
It got a 6.8 and is much better than either of the other two.
Scientests discover a huge star is hurtling towards Earth and will wipe out all life. They are correct.
So they build a space ship that can hold 40 people and try to fly away to a new planet before the star collides with Earth.
A better choice is the 1981 BBC TV mini-series version, which has dated and is very much of its time - the lead character is the kind of tidy beard-wearing primary school teacher that seemed to dominate British TV drama in the very early 1980s. The kind of museli-eating, whole foods eating, post-hippie environmentalist that was at the time extremely hip and then became incredibly unfashionable and has become fashionable again. Beards weren’t fashionable in the early 1980s, you had to be clean-cut instead.
Er, yes. I remember it scaring me as a kid, and looking at it nowadays it’s reminiscent of 28 Days Later (similar plot arc). The Triffids themselves are mostly in the background.
Along vaguely similar lines the BBC’s Survivors, from the mid-1970s, posited a scenario where the population was greatly decreased… but the odds were greatly increased that I may someday get a chance to kiss your lips. I thank the Lord each day for the apocalypse.
Folks are mostly disfigured or dead, but Sugar I won’t let it go to my head. My momma’s face has dripped down into the dirt, but I’m still chasing chitlins, whisky, and skirt. In the words of the song. I’ve digressed, sorry.