An apocalyptic event places an enormous burden on any who survive it: With no time to mourn the world they once knew, they’re instead saddled with the herculean task of rebuilding it, brick by brick. But Will Forte’s canceled-too-soon comedy series The Last Man On Earth (2015-2018), in which Phil Miller (Forte) believes himself to be the titular lone survivor of a deadly global outbreak, takes a unique approach to reckoning with the all-encompassing responsibility of reforming civilization — ignoring it completely.

Instead, Phil lounges in a margarita kiddie pool, draws faces on sporting goods and speaks to (and gets drunk with) them, steals priceless art and hangs it on his walls, and just generally refuses to accomplish anything, treating the absence of humankind not as an existential weight to be lifted, but rather as a boundless form of freedom. Only in this new anti-world can he sleep in Hugh Hefner’s pajamas, sip casually from a $10,000 bottle of wine (and chase it with Cheez Whiz), bowl in a parking lot using fishtanks for pins, and open any glass door simply by shooting it with a gun. But it’s only the discovery of another person — of some true purpose — that keeps the “last man on earth” from exiting his world early.

Despite its title, The Last Man On Earth doesn’t leave Phil alone for long, and whether he likes it or not, slowly but surely, he and his fellow survivors begin to constitute a new society. This, of course, is where the bulk of the show’s comedy comes from: Phil, having gotten used to feeling special as humankind’s ostensible sole representative, feels he has to scrape and claw his way to the center of attention, contributing little to his compatriots’ efforts to make the best of their situation. Particularly now, in a time where you can’t jump into a margarita kiddie pool without splashing someone unemployed, there’s something deeply sympathetic about Phil’s overwhelming desire to feel useful; to be looked up to, even if he has no way of earning the respect for which he yearns. The best he can do, ultimately — or at least up until The Last Man On Earth‘s Season 4 finale, a cliffhanger now doomed never to be resolved — is simply to survive … to try, and to keep trying. Perhaps that’s the best any of us can do.

 

Aundria Parker — THE STAND (1994)

The Stand is Stephen King’s big, bouncing baby of a novel, the hardcover weighing in somewhere around a slight newborn. At 1100+ pages, it sprawls through the breakout of a deadly virus called Captain Tripps, the decimation of life as we know it, and the fates of dozens of characters. While the original cover art makes it look like fantasy — two figures; one dark, one light, each with a blade and both…wearing tights? — the reality of The Stand feels too on the nose given our current situation.

In May of 1994, ABC aired the four-part miniseries adaptation of King’s novel, directed by Mick Garris with the teleplay written by King himself. The leaking of the virus and the widespread death are mostly contained to the first part of the miniseries, The Plague. Sickness and quarantine, paranoia and panic. Hey, we know that tune. Baby, can you dig your man? When the death toll starts to rise, and the truth of humanity’s fate becomes clear, there’s rioting, martial law, and the execution of the press, on air. For starters. The extremes presented at the beginning of the end seemed outlandish in 1994. Now, at our current pace, it kinda feels like…2024?

But Captain Tripps, workhorse of a plague that it is, completes its mission. The airwaves fall silent, the tanks still, and the last of the naysayers and doomsdayers go stiff. There’s a whole lot to THE STAND that isn’t about the virus, of course. It comes down to good and evil, the best of what’s within us and the worst. You can welcome your damnation without knowing it.

I love this movie, and I don’t care that it looks dated or feels a little Velveeta. I’ve seen it so many times, and I still feel the sting when certain characters meet their unfair fates. I love the twangy score, dusty like the cornfields of Nebraska and the deserts of Nevada. I’ve never seen a more effective use of Don’t Fear The Reaper. I love that there’s a murderers row of talent involved, including horror royalty. Sherman Howard plays a baddie in a lab coat, an authority figure gone crackers. Ed Harris, Matt Frewer, and Corin Nemec all have sizeable roles. There’s a cameo by the authorman himself, as well as Kathy Bates, Warren Frost, Tom Holland, Sam Raimi, John Landis, and Joe Bob Briggs. I love all of it, but especially the chicken-fried, clammy-skinned, wide-eyed terror of The Plague.

The movie opens with the final stanza of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men:”

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

There’s a new version of THE STAND in production for CBS All Access, a ten-parter with a finish date TBD.

Let’s hope it airs before the last whimper.

Honorable mention: Xavier Gens’ THE DIVIDE (2011). Nothing like a nuclear blast to bring out the nasty.

 

G.G. Graham — The Amazing Criswell

Of all of the tales told of the end times and the wasteland that inevitably awaits us, mid-century never-was The Amazing Criswell is the clear winner in the nuclear winter of my cold, black heart. Best known to modern audiences as the narrator from Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Criswell parlayed a droning inflection and a penchant for an up do into a small industry of delightfully inane predictions.

Mae West for president, Florida as an immense nudist colony, and interplanetary conventions at Las Vegas casinos, nothing was too silly for Criswell to put on record, in print or to fuel his talk show guest appearances. For all of the decadence and hedonism of his predictions for the future, his initial literary doomsday call for humanity is surprisingly plausible and pedestrian, grading on a curve. In 1968’s Criswell Predicts, he posits that the surface of the earth will bulge, skewing the Earth’s gravity, and eventually burying us all in upended inner earth rubble.

The harbinger of the impending mud pie apocalypse? Vending machines. The beginning of the expansion will cause vending machines to refuse to function, payphone coin returns to fail, and jukeboxes to go mute. While Criswell later abandons this idea for punchier predictions of space invaders and suffocation inducing black rainbows, I prefer his first draft. The Amazing Criswell’s version of the future was full of odd duck debauchery, aphrodisiacal fragrances inducing Mae West to invite us all up to come and see her on the moon. There’s something delightfully Douglas-Adams-like about the beginning of the end being a lack of black cherry Shasta.

You may watch movies like THE ROAD WARRIOR and SNOWPIERCER and think “Well, this is fine, but what I really want is a movie that depicts the future as even more bleak and gruesome.” That movie is Richard Stanley’s HARDWARE, grimy, post-punk sci-fi horror about a murderous robot who terrorizes the artist trying to use it for scrap metal. With cameo appearances from Lemmy Kilmister and Iggy Pop, plus Public Image Ltd.’s iconic “The Order of Death” on the soundtrack (“This is what you want, this is what you get…”), HARDWARE somehow manages to be both very 1990 and timeless at once. The whole thing looks like it was filmed through a haze of air pollution and sweat, and flies in the face of every other film that illustrates a shiny, flying car America of the future.

But mostly it’s just outrageously gory. Eyes are gouged out, torsos are bisected, pervert neighbors are run through with a drill. The reveal that it’s part of a projected funded by the United States government to control overpopulation, and is doing exactly what it was programmed to do, makes it all the more horrifying. Imagine what kind of terror it would wreak if it wasn’t working according to plan?

Mike Vanderbilt – DEATH RACE 2000 (1975)

Even with its comic book palate and what amount to pro-wrestling personalities driving life-size Hot Wheels, Paul Bartel’s DEATH RACE 2000 arguably best resembles what a post-apocalyptic America would look like. The country wouldn’t immediately devolve into a wasteland overrun by mutant punks killing one another in the streets over oil: America would find a way to monetize and televise the body count first.

There is no subtlety in the satirical script by longtime Roger Corman collaborators Charles B. Griffith and Robert Thom about a cross-country race that combines Le Mans, Sunday football, WWF, and… let’s call it a form of population control. Being a Corman production, the film delivers top-notch violence, T & A, and a pitch black, violent sense of humor. In a decades-long run, DEATH RACE 2000 remains a quintessential Corman production, delivering thrills, spills, and quality kills executed with style by Corman favorites David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Woronov, Roberta Collins, and noted Los Angles DJ “The Real Don Steele” stealing scenes as the race announcer.

 

Jeremy Lowe — TURBO KID (2015)

When the trailer for TURBO KID hit YouTube, I was instantly in awe of everything that it is. I love a great homage, and this is probably one of the best tributes to 1980s post-apocalyptic action films I have ever seen. Writers/directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell created a story that perfectly encapsulated the whimsy of fantasy films. It brought to mind director Alan Johnson’s SOLARBABIES (1986), but still brutal enough to make me think of the kill-or-be-killed world of filmmaker Enzo G. Castellari’s 1990: BRONX WARRIORS (1982).

In August of 2015, the Chicago Filmmakers association had a screening of TURBO KID, and I couldn’t pass up seeing this film with an audience. I brought a group of friends with me who didn’t know much about the film, which personally I think is the best way to go into seeing a movie. Cinematographer Jean-Philippe Bernier did such a perfect job of capturing the aesthetic of the 1980s post-apocalyptic films that some of my friends were asking how they could have missed this film when it was originally released. I kind of giggled when I explained that this was a brand-new film that they just saw.

I absolutely loved the relationship between The Kid (Munro Chambers) and Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) . It seems so genuine, and to see it blossom in the wasteland of 1997 was spot on. Then to see these two child-like superheroes do battle against the tyrannical overlord Zeus (Michael Ironside) just made this movie magical. This movie has a real heart. As a child in the 1980s, who grew up on all the films that influenced TURBO KID, these characters’ story arcs really touched something in my soul.

Between the over-the-top blood and gore, the tongue-in-cheek humor, and the true love of post-apocalyptic cinema, TURBO KID is a must-see. In a world where there isn’t much to be joyful over right now, we film fans need to be able to enjoy a little cotton candy for the brain. TURBO KID finely balances its respect for the past without being complete nostalgia porn.

 

Lisa Dreyer — ULTRA PULPE (2018)

ULTRA PULPE, Bertrand Mandico’s short film from 2018, is the bizarrely imaginative, sexy and exquisitely art-directed version of a life after the apocalypse we can only hope to aspire to. The ending of a torrid love affair between a director and actress on set mirrors the ending of the world, a deserted, neon planet straight out of a B-movie, sound-tracked by pounding techno. Mandico’s apocalypse might look like an other-wordly fashion shoot, but the tension is high and emotions are on overdrive as the crew, wielding lumpy, grotesque camera equipment, attempt to finish a film despite the difficult circumstances. Bizarre aliens, dangerous monsters, and a hellish landscape filled with peril are no match for the drive to create. We’re never certain where the film set ends and real life begins, as the director and actress (played to perfection by Elina Löwensohn and Pauline Jacquard), slide from one scene to the next, their world transforming from sci-fi dystopia to a giallo-esque horror set, to a grotesque erotic film.  Trapped in our dull homes, such worlds, despite the dangers lurking, have a new, distinct appeal.

Our current version of the apocalypse is sad and pale by comparison. Mandico’s apocalyptic afterworld is marked by sex, skintight space-age clothing, and a lust for life despite the odds. Ours is a slow descent into sloppiness and despair, people in grey sweats, staring at screens, alone. If the world has to end, please let it be directed by Mandico, complete with good lighting and a pulsing soundtrack.

Mandico’s newest feature, AFTER BLUE, was set to premiere at Cannes this year, which of course, in a bizarre turn of events even the most creative minds couldn’t have predicted, has been moved online. However, ULTRA PULPE, whose English title is fittingly APOCALYPSE AFTER, gives us hope that filmmaking and creativity will prevail, despite the overwhelming circumstances.

 

 

Brett Gallman — X-MEN: AGE OF APOCALYPSE (1995)

The ’90s comics landscape was dominated by universe-shattering events, most of them orchestrated to grab headlines and media exposure. Once DC killed off Superman and scored tons of publicity, the genie was out of the bottle, granting demented fanboy wishes of validating the medium.  It quickly turned into a monkey’s paw situation, though, as Superman’s death is now largely remembered as a publicity stunt that skewed the course of an entire decade that saw increasingly ludicrous storylines. Batman’s back was broken (he got better); Spider-Man turned out to be a clone (at last check, he got this straightened out); most of the Marvel Universe’s heavy-hitters were exiled to a pocket universe (they made it back).

But there’s one that really captured my attention: like all of the cool ’90s kids, I was obsessed with the X-Men, and there was no way Marvel was going to let its band of mutants sit out the decade’s major event/crossover hysteria. They committed to the bit, too: not content to simply kill off a major character, Marvel offed Professor Xavier in the past, setting off a chain of events that rewrote X-history. Without Xavier around, his longtime rival, friend, and bitter enemy Magneto took up the mantle of the X-Men but did so amidst the apocalyptic ruins of the Marvel Universe.

AGE OF APOCALYPSE imagines a world where En Sabah Nur — the world’s first mutant — reigns supreme having eradicated most of humankind, and it had the perfect amount of nonsense to light my easily impressed 12-year-old mind on fire. For several months, the X-books were rebranded with entirely different titles and characters, many familiar but reimagined.  Now missing a hand, Wolverine Weapon X carries out missions on behalf of the world’s few surviving humans. Cyclops patrols concentration camps at the behest of Mr. Sinister. Once one of Apocalypse’s loyal soldiers, Sabretooth has joined forces with the X-Men. Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria. As a kid who adored WHAT IF?, I couldn’t help but love that Marvel did an months-long alternate universe event.  And even though I casually observe comics now, my ears still perk up whenever Marvel revisits AGE OF APOCALYPSE. Who knows — maybe someday we might even see Marvel Studios take a stab at a live-action version very far down the road. I mean, it’s not like anyone has tried to bring Apocalypse to the big screen yet — right?

 

Albert Muller — STEPHEN KING’S THE STAND (book: 1978; miniseries: 1994)

For the last 30-odd years, I’d have had to go with this one. For a post-apocalyptic story, it was always the one that had the characters I loved (and hated, and even pitied) the most. Almost all of us wanted to be Stu but were at best Larry, aside from those poor souls who had a bit too much Harold in their DNA. It’s as funny as the end of the world could possibly be, a little wise, and sometimes achingly sad. It’s also hugely exciting and scary as hell, thanks to not just the Walkin’ Dude but also the chilling plausibility of the whole thing.

Which, obviously, is why it’s weird now. You think “this could totally happen” and then something a bit like it does happen, and it sucks about as badly or worse than you imagined.

I mean, things are not as bad as they are in this book or the ’90s miniseries. But sometimes they feel just that bad.

The surreality of it all has teeth, as Big Steve might put it — and yes, they do bite somewhat.

 

 

Jon Abrams — I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson (1954)

There have been a handful of film adaptations of this story. LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964) has its eerie moments, as obviously must do Vincent Price amidst an all-Italian cast. THE OMEGA MAN (1971), my own initial entryway into the story, is the campiest. Charlton Heston in a peaked cap will do that. The Will Smith version is serviceable but even upon release in 2007, it strained under the weight of too much CGI. And I just found out about The Asylum’s counterpoint, I AM OMEGA (2007), with Mark Dacascos, which now I am on a mission to find. Really, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) is the truest cinematic “adaptation” to date. George A. Romero really only used Matheson’s story as a jumping-off point, and obviously went a different way, but the idea of the undead surging and swarming a fragile domicile, if it started with Matheson, has never been captured better than in Romero’s 1968 masterpiece.

But go back to the book. Always. It’s like a bible to me. Recently, Tor Books put out a beautiful and affordable pocket-sized hardcover edition, with the thinnest of pages — it couldn’t feel more like a bible. And how fitting.

I AM LEGEND is eternal. It has never felt dated, not after six-and-a-half decades. To me it’s as durable an American novel as MOBY DICK, or if it’s to be classified as a novella, let’s say THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. These are essential, vital works of fiction, which gain new meaning with each decade of history, with each new gain and with each fresh Hell.

As I write this, we are all living in quarantine. Those of us with sense, anyway. There are some out in the streets, protesting for their right to be exposed to, contract, and spread a potentially fatal virus for which there is currently no vaccine. If America in 2020 were I AM LEGEND, about a man barricading himself inside a self-made fortress meant to keep out a vampiric horde calling for his doom, it’s fairly clear who would be who. (The brilliance of I AM LEGEND, by the way, is that by its ending and in its very title, it challenges the reader’s perception of who’re the good guys and who’re the bad guys.)

To me, this story isn’t about the horde. It’s about the man. The staying power of this story is that it’s an inside job. It’s about the isolation. A fair critique of the novel, and of my own writings, as paltry as they are in comparison, is the emphasis on man. In I AM LEGEND, Robert Neville spends more time than you may even remember being tormented by his lust, beckoned every night by undead temptresses but knowing that succumbing to these urges would mean death. I don’t think Matheson meant to exclude the female perspective; he chose to tell this story about this particular man. Maybe there’s a female author out there dreaming up her own tale of the last woman on earth. I’d love to read that!

But what I respond to above all about I AM LEGEND is the drudgery of loneliness. The drudgery, and the comforts. If you are alone, nobody can hurt you. In the words of another character from another great statement about solitude, “I am alone. I am not lonely.” I have always been an isolator. Even surrounded by loved ones, I’ve historically found a way to be apart, if not physically then figuratively. I’m never more alone than in a crowd. Walking through midtown Manhattan at noon (in the time before quarantine), I could still manage to feel like the last man on earth. This is what depression is like, maybe. Is that an illustration that makes sense to fellow depressives? I wouldn’t know. I never ask anybody. What I AM LEGEND captures better (for me) than any piece of art I’ve ever seen or read or heard is what it’s like.

We are in the post-apocalypse, right now. Some of us are going stir-crazy. Some of us are turning to liquor, like Robert Neville did. Some of us are picking up our metaphorical pitchforks and going on the march. God help them. Some are turning to God, by the way! And me, I’m weirdly placid. Surely, I’ve found ways to isolate even in isolation, and  I’ve had many dark moments over the past several weeks, but no more than usual — if anything, less. The truth is: I can take it. I’ve had the practice. That doesn’t make me a tough guy. It makes me a master isolator. I wouldn’t wish it upon you. But that’s who I am. And I see it reflected every time I reread this wonderful, terrifying, perfect book.