Friday, December 14, 2007

Things That Won't Be in the Movie I: I Am Legend

Who wants to bet this part didn't get adapted to the Will Smith-blockbuster version of Richard Matheson's brilliant I Am Legend?
He never looked at them anymore. In the beginning he'd made a peephole in the front window and watched them. But then the women had seen him and had started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house.
[...]
He closed his eyes again. It was the women who made it so difficult, he thought, the women posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility that he'd see them and decide to come out.
A shudder ran through him. Every night it was the same. He'd be reading and listening to music. Then he'd start think about soundproofing the house, then he'd think about the women.
[...]
The women were out there, their dresses open or taken off, their flesh waiting for his touch, their lips waiting for--
[...]
The women, the lustful, bloodthirsty, naked women flaunting their hot bodies at him. No, not hot.
This might just sound like I'm looking for the sexy. I am. But the respectable reasoning for this is that vampires have a long history of being sexualized creatures in their depictions in both films and books at least back to Dracula (sorry, I'm not up on my Polidori). Hell, Anne Rice has built a cottage industry out of this. And to me, Matheson subverts this. Sexual desire is replaced with sexual disgust. I'll be surprised if this is not the least bit bland, and contains "Come out, Neville!" or keeps the brilliant ending intact.

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