Starring Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone, Edward Wain
Directed by Roger Corman
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A shady business executive, his wife, and his lawyer, find themselves the last three surviving people on Earth after the planet's oxygen suddenly disappears on their trip to Puerto Rico.
Screenwriter Robert Towne (who later won an Oscar for Chinatown), wrote the script, and plays the lawyer (under pseudonym Edward Wain) in this Roger Corman production, which was filmed back to back with Creature From The Haunted Sea, but couldn't be more different, although featuring the same principal actors. A serious end-of-the-world drama, the film takes the idea of two men fighting over the lone remaining woman, and although the movie comes down to the idea of who will end up possessing her, the sexism of that approach is glaring but doesn't become overpowering. I think that's due to Jones-Moreland's quality performance as a person who wants to take back her life, running away with Wain, not because she has to have a man, but because he's the better and less controlling option. There's also some interesting ideas in Towne's screenplay I wasn't expecting concerning the real-life difficulties their characters would have to face. I watched the version of this movie that was assembled for television, which featured added scenes filmed to pad out the running time, but unfortunately with Jones-Moreland having a completely different hair color, which they tried to negate by converting the film to black and white. I've seen the original film in color, and it's a far better version, but it's interesting to see how they integrated the scenes.
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