U.S. science-fiction and horror author Richard Matheson, whose novels and stories, including "I Am Legend" and "The Shrinking Man," were adapted for the big screen and television, has died, the Writers Guild of America said on Monday. He was 87. The Writer's Guild, of which Matheson was a member, did not announce where or when the author died nor a cause of death. Matheson, who was born in Allendale, New Jersey, in 1926 and raised in Brooklyn, New York, first began publishing science-fiction and horror stories in the 1950s. His 1954 horror novel "I Am Legend" is considered a landmark work in the genre, ushering in zombies and apocalyptic themes to post-World War Two America. The novel was adapted three times as a film, most recently in 2007 as a big-budget thriller starring Will Smith. Matheson also wrote the teleplay "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in 1963 for "The Twilight Zone" television series. The episode, which stars William Shatner, has become a much-referenced TV classic with a famous shot of a gremlin peering into the window of the plane from its wing. Read more http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_23534460/i-am-legend-author-richard-matheson-dead-at
I think The Last Man on Earth (1964) was the first or one of the first films based on I Am Legend. Vincent Price is in it. It is supposed to be very dark but instead it comes off as pretty campy, especially when Price starts judo-chopping ghouls about the head and neck. Images of him dumping bodies out of the back of his station wagon are also unintentionally comical. The Will Smith version completely loses the thread. The point of the novel and the title of it is that at the end the vampires capture him and put him on trial. He's been going around staking them by day. In a vampire world, he's the murderous monster of legend.
