Richard Matheson’s immortal 1954 novel I AM LEGEND has been adapted to the screen in the Vincent Price vehicle THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964), the Charlton Heston headlined OMEGA MAN (1971), and the Will Smith starrer I AM LEGEND (2007). There was also this 1967 black and white short from Spain, which will never supplant those other films but is interesting enough to at least warrant some attention.
Running 36 minutes, SOY LEYENDA was a student project from Spain’s prestigious Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía (now known as La Escuela Oficial de Cine de España), which turned out important filmmakers like Victor Erice (of THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE) and Ivan Zulueta (of ARREBATO). SOY LEYENDA’s director Mario Gómez Martín, alas, appears to have flamed out quite quickly after completing this film, never having made the jump to features.
A lengthy textual introduction, set over stock footage of atomic blasts and civil strife, fills us in on the background of SOY LEYENDA’S future world: the setting is in the far-off year 1999, when the world has been destroyed and its inhabitants turned into vampires. The only human survivor is Robert Neville, a man who spends his days staking vampires and his nights shut up in his house while vampires, many of whom he once knew, mass outside and call his name—all of which is intercut with pre-apocalypse flashbacks showing how Neville’s wife became infected with the vampire virus. He meets a seemingly copacetic woman named Ruth, who he suspects of being a vampire but takes into his home anyway. Big mistake!
A student film this may be, but it has an assured visual style and highly atmospheric art direction (marred slightly by some wobbly camerawork and unconvincing day-for-night shots). The intricately constructed sound design and ultra-sparse, twangy string-based score by Pierre Henry and François-Bernard Mâche further enhance the sense of horror and desolation.
Where the film falters is in the storytelling department. The narrative is very nearly the definition of elegant simplicity, yet the proceedings feel convoluted and incoherent. The problems include the fact that no real demarcation in terms of visual design or editing is made between the flashbacks and the here-and-now scenes, resulting in needless confusion, and a rather perfunctory third act that never quite makes the jump, narratively speaking, from the lonely single person thrust of the earlier scenes to the more populous final ones.
That’s a shame, because Mario Gómez Martín gets most everything else right. Particularly affecting is the lead performance of Moisés Menéndez, who captures the everyman vibe central to Richard Matheson’s conception; unlike the headliners of THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, THE OMEGA MAN and I AM LEGEND, this guy isn’t a horror icon, a macho matinee idol or a comedian/action star, and the film is all more effective for that.
Vital Statistics
SOY LEYENDO (I AM LEGEND)
Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía
Director: Mario Gómez Martín
Producer: José Luis García Alonso
Screenplay: Mario Gómez Martín, Alfonso Núñez Flores
(Based on a novel by Richard Matheson)
Cinematography: Jesús Ocaña
Cast: Moises Menendez, Eliska Ramirez, Jose Maria Resel, Ricardo Palacios, Ana Castor