B-Movies with Marg: The Last Woman on Earth

That knife looks like a long thin penis.

The Last Woman on Earth has a genius premise if you need to film something crazy cheap - that was what Roger Corman was (always) looking for - here, he hit solid gold. Three people, two men and one woman, end up being the last human beings on earth after all the oxygen is temporarily (inexplicably!) gone from the air. Conveniently, Evelyn (the titular woman), her husband Howard, and Howard's lawyer Martin, are all on a scuba diving adventure while on vacation in Puerto Rico when this happens - being underwater and then using their oxygen tanks is what saves their lives. Surviving comes with it's own set of problems however, as Evelyn (already neglected by her money laundering husband) is now the proud owner of the only living ladyparts on the island, and by all indications, the entire World.

Really, The Last Woman on Earth is just an extreme version of any love triangle. Howard treats Evelyn like his property, and Martin listens to her - there was attraction before the end of the world, and it is heightened by the isolation and bizarreness of the whole situation. He's a bit younger than her husband too, and has a certain nebbish charm - how could she resist?

I actually adore that when the extra-martial digression (what would that piece of paper mean in such a non-society, anyway?) is revealed, Evelyn treats it all very matter of factly with her husband. She's not apologetic, and although Howard assumes that Martin must have taken advantage of her, Ev makes it very clear that he did nothing of the sort. She boned him, she felt like it, and that's that. Of course Howard banishes Martin from their Apocalypse acquired vacation villa, which came as no shock to me, but really seemed to surprise Evelyn and her lover : "You'd exile one third of the human race?" Martin asks.

You can't just do that, though - exile 1/3 of everybody - so Ev runs away too, and Howard and Martin end up having one of the most bizarrely filmed fights I've ever seen - they hit each other with guns, and dive into water after each other, there is a prolonged chase scene that looked like they were running through an Escher painting.

If I were rewriting the film, I'd have Evelyn take off all of her own, but the script as is presents her as really just having the two choices, it's one man or the other. The poor woman's options are terrible though! Howard is an insensitive, possessive, craggy-faced crook who cares more about money (even in a world where money means nothing!) than he does about feelings. Martin is a depressive, weak, pessimistic wiener - and he sees (rightly...) no point in two people trying to repopulate the human race. Ev really thinks a baby is a great idea (it's not, given the situation), and in her mind, a point for Howard is that he agrees. 

Howard made a point of telling Ev "this is fish" during this awkward dinner scene.

Corman filmed The Last Woman on Earth at the same time as he filmed the comparatively sprawling Creature from the Haunted Sea while on location in Puerto Rico. The main cast is the same, with stars Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone and Robert Towne appearing in both pictures. Robert Towne used a stage name for Last Woman however, as he was also the writer of the script which was unfinished at the start of filming. This saved money, one of Corman's favourite things to do.

I have no proof, but I am convinced that both films used the same footage of people scuba diving. It makes sense, as filming underwater would have been quite expensive. I kept expecting to see the Creature float by, however. Last Woman absolutely did repeat some of it's own shots - reusing footage of a fishing net being thrown into water at least three separate times.

The editing on this movie was delightfully choppy, but one of my favourite things was a continuity error - in at least two scenes, Evelyn has what looks like quite dark hair, despite being blond throughout the movie. Now, this could even have been a white-balance error, and sometimes shades are hard to determine in black & white movies - but it stood out enough to me to question how no one caught this at the time. You can see what I am talking about in this collection of screen capture, her hair looks clearly brown at the 43:42 capture:  

Click to enlarge.

There was one particularly shocking implied moment in Last Woman. Midway through the film, after demonstrating Martin's loneliness and third-wheel-being (this is before Ev and he sleep together), a shot opens on a woman's body lying on the beach. It lingers long enough that I expected her to start moving, but she doesn't. She's dead, just like everyone else on Earth. The camera pulls out, and we see Martin walking away from the body down the shoreline - and the backside of his pants is soaking wet. He walks along the beach, and finally runs into Ev and Howard (who are looking like a couple of 1950s greasers for some reason). Martin says he just had a blind date.

So... let that sink in for you.

Yeah.

The trailer there is in colour, but the version I saw (and all the full versions I've found online) are in black and white. Perhaps seeing it in colour would solve my own personal hair shade mystery. 

The Last Woman on Earth was an entertaining B, which never bothered to explain it's own disaster, and may or may not have included some necrophilia. Fun for the whole family! 

Marg
@acuteinsomnia

Previously in this series:  A Bucket of Blood,  Creature from the Haunted Sea, The Wasp Woman, and Attack of the Giant Leeches