Thankfully, Matheson would collaborate with Hammer again for both Fanatic (1965) and The Devil Rides Out (1968), but this lost project is a tantalising teaser. This same change was carried through to 2007’s I Am Legend, which reinstated the original title but was, in reality nothing more than a reboot of the Heston picture. Beyond that, even though the script dilutes the killer punch of the novel’s ending, the sheer apocalyptic nature of the piece may have been enough to worry the censors in its own right.īy the time the story reappeared as 1971’s The Omega Man, Charlton Heston was battling not vampires but albino mutants. So, what exactly did the censors object to? Well, there are multiple stakings, as well as an uncomfortable scene in which Neville conducts tortuous experiments on a female vampire. To make matters worse, America’s MPAA expressed their own concerns about the script, making that crucial US co-funding unlikely. Whilst the company’s experience with the Frankenstein picture would have braced them for reservations from the censors, the actual response must have been quite a shock – the board made it clear that they would not consider giving a certificate to any film made from the existing screenplay. It was common practice at the time for film producers to send a script to the BBFC for comment, in order to see if any changes were required in order to meet their desired classification. The story follows Neville as he firstly tries to come to terms with and understand his predicament, before embarking on the search for a cure, whilst flashbacks detail the loss of his wife and child, as all around him succumb to this mystery virus.

At what must have been quite a cost to the company at the time, Matheson was flown to Britain with a view to adapting his book into a screenplay, which he retitled The Night Creatures.Ĭlosely following the novel for the most part, the script concerned one Robert Neville, apparently the sole survivor of this unknown plague.

Its tale of a near future world in which the human race has turned into vampiric creatures perhaps offered a follow-up not only to the Frankenstein film, but to their sci-fi horrors of the previous few years. Matheson’s screenplay for Universal’s The Incredible Shrinking Man had raised his profile in the film world no end, and his 1954 novel I Am Legend grabbed Hammer’s attention.

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