Movie review - Corman #25 – “The Last Woman on Earth” (1961) **

Robert Towne not only wrote the script for this film, but has one of the three main roles (he’s clean shaven). He plays the lawyer of a shonky businessman with a beautiful wife: the three of them go diving in Puerto Rico one day and when they come up it seems everyone has been wiped out.

While Towne’s script isn’t quite Chinatown it’s still a pretty decent effort, full of conflict and interesting characters – for instance, the businessman is established as a bit of a scum bag but once they’re the last people on earth he’s the only one who has ant ideas about what to do.

Towne’s acting is more of a drawback – it’s not so much he’d bad just a bit too laid back for a role which could have done with more energy, or sexiness. (The sexiest thing about the film is the credits, slow panning over a naked shape of a woman). And while the three characterisations in this are strong there isn’t much of a story. One would think Corman would really get into the visuals of showing people-running-down-empty-streets but that only happens towards the end. And he doesn’t get into any end-of-the-world fantasy sequences eg ransacking shopping centres.

This film a bit more adult and sexy than Corman’s films to that date eg there’s no doubt Towne and Jones-Moreland have sex. Maybe this is why Corman was distracted from tackling other end of world issues eg there’s no mutants or other survivor – something which would have given the film a better third act than adultery. I also the film would have been sexier if Corman had cast his original choice in the female role, Alison Hayes, but he ended up seeing Jones-Moreland in a play and going with her instead.

This was issued on DVD with special features as part of the “Roger Corman Puerto Rico trilogy”. Until I saw the DVD I had no idea the film was shot in colour! (To be honest, colour doesn’t add super much to the film – there’s a lot of brown eg brown walls, brown shorts and the location isn’t really exploited; and besides black and white kind of suits apocalyptic tales anyway.)

There’s an entertaining commentary with Fred Olen Ray, some other dude and two of the actors (Olen Ray says Robert Towne was invited and the door was left open for him to turn up right until the last minute but he doesn’t show).

The actors continually refer to Corman’s cheapness, not really in an affectionate way - Jones-Moreland bitches about the lack of hairdressing, costume, stuntman, etc (one story – she was having trouble in the water and asked for rope and they threw the whole rope in.); although later on both say they admire him and pay tribute to his energy. The commentators poke some affectionate fun at the 60-ness of it all – dressing for dinner, drinking martinis, etc even after the apocalypse.