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The Last Man on Earth by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow (1964)

About The Last Man on Earth

In Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow’s The Last Man on Earth, a plague devastated life on Earth, and the population died or became a sort of zombie living in the dark. Dr. Robert Morgan is the unique healthy survivor on the planet, having a routine life for his own survival: he kills the night creatures along the day and maintains the safety of his house, to be protected along the night. He misses his beloved wife and daughter, consumed by the outbreak, and he fights against his loneliness to maintain mentally sane. When Dr. Morgan finds the contaminated Ruth Collins, he uses his blood to heal her and he becomes the last hope on Earth to help the other contaminated survivors. But the order of this new society is scary. (IMDb)

About Ubaldo Ragona

During his early life, Ragona was very interested by movies and became the director of an Italian cinematography journal “Passo Ridotto”.
At the beginning of his career he focused on documentaries, moving to feature films after a period of break.

About Sidney Salkow

American director of second features, the son of a tailor. Many of his films were competent, but routine westerns, war films and crime melodramas. He first worked for Republic, joining Universal between 1936 and 1938. At Columbia (1940-43, 1947, and 1952-53), he handled, among other assignments, four instalments of the popular Lone Wolf series. 

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The Omen by Richard Donner (1976)

About The Omen

In Richard Donner’s The Omen, mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist? The Devil’s own son? 

Robert and Katherine Thorn seem to have it all. They are happily married and he is the US Ambassador to Great Britain, but they want nothing more than to have children. When Katharine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. Without telling his wife he agrees. After relocating to London, strange events — and the ominous warnings of a priest — lead him to believe that the child he took from that Italian hospital is evil incarnate. (IMDb)

About Richard Donner

Richard Donner (born Richard Donald Schwartzberg; April 24, 1930) is an American film director and producer. After directing the horror film The Omen (1976), Donner became famous for directing the first modern superhero film, Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve.

Donner later went on to direct such films such as The Goonies (1985) and Scrooged (1988), while reinvigorating the buddy film genre with Lethal Weapon (1987) and its sequels. He and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner, own the production company The Donner’s Company, which is most well known for producing the X-Men film series. In 2000, he received the President’s Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Film historian Michael Barson writes that Donner is “one of Hollywood’s most reliable makers of action blockbusters”. (Wiki)

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Medium Cool/David Cronenberg/Cosmopolis

In a terrific LA Times article about David Cronenberg, the 69-year-old Toronto-born and based director, J Hoberman  posits the question, “Is David Cronenberg our most original director?” My answer would be a resounding, yes. Cronenberg, whose new film Cosmopolis, stars Twilight’s Robert Pattison, is based on the prophetic 2003 Don DeLillo novel, caused  quite a stir at this years Cannes Film Festival. With its unorthodox narrative, nonsensical dialogue seemingly spoken in code,  and its bleak commentary on the amorality of our modern financial system, the dangers of unchecked wealth run amok,  and what the future holds for us a society because of it. But Cronenberg has never been a stranger to the bizarre and unusual throughout his prolific career as a filmmaker.  From the world of snuff TV and sadomasochism in 1981’s Videodrome, up through last year’s A Dangerous Method, the Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud melodrama, which treads along similar themes of seduction, and the flesh’s victories over barriers human society has erected against it. Cronenberg’s films have always shocked and titillated, yet at the same time have been quite cerebral, thoughtful, and philosophical, making for a potent combination.

What really sets Cronenberg apart from his contemporaries is his uncompromising vision and the fact that he has continually challenged himself and his audience in new and original techniques in storytelling. He seems to be most interested in the human condition; specifically the psychological exploration of human contradictions and idiosyncrasies, which offer a wealth of material for him to explore.