The novel I Am Legend has been converted to Movie format four times so far:  First as The Last Man On Earth, and most recently as I Am Legend (with Will Smith) and I Am Omega (a cheap knockoff direct-to-video).

This version starring Charlton Heston is actually pretty good.  Way different from the book, but definitely a brainchild of a generation full of the wonders of science, and the fears of what we may do with those wonders.

Even if you've seen I Am Legend, you may enjoy this version's take on the tale.

The border war between China and Russia overheats to the boiling point, and both sides decide to engage with Chemical and Biological Weapons.  Unfortunatly, their deployment systems sucked, and instead of just carrying the payload to the target, it leakes the disease into the atmosphere, into the global air currents, spreading the biological weapon throughout the world.

The first stage is a sudden blockage of air, followed by unconsiousness and usually death.  However, if you avoid the death part, you become consious again, a walking timebomb.  It might take months, or weeks, or hours, but eventually the disease locks in again and turns you into a light sensitive zombie/vampire type person.

Charlton Heston plays Dr. Robert Neville, a counter-biological-weapons scientist, who creates an experimental vacciene which is effective against this disease;  however, while in the helicopter taking the vacciene to a test hospital, the pilot succumbs to the disease and dies at the controls, pitching the chopper into the ground.  Dr. Neville takes the vacciene, and it works.

But now he's the last healthy human on the planet, or so far as he knows.

This movie follows Dr. Neville as he tries to survive, while the ringleader of the zombie/vampire stage-three victims turn him into Public Enemy #1, a symbol of the sciences that destroyed the world.

A few moral delimmas come up:  Is it OK to kill the vampires if they're trying to kill you?  Is it OK to hunt the vampires down to protect yourself?  If you have a cure, but the patients have decided they don't want it, is it OK to hold it back, or is it better to force the cure on them?  Interesting moral situations are brought up by the vampires as well, who attempt to destroy Dr. Neville's due to his "science," which they blame for the violence inflicted by powers on the other side of the word;  but they're more than happy to revert just far enough back to use catapoults and bows and arrows in their constant attempts to kill Dr. Neville.  In other words:  is science actually a power of evil, or does it just allow evil and good greater powers in their struggles?

It's a very good version of the story, even if it was made in the 70s with Charlton Heston, which pretty much guarantees a plot that moves in first gear the whole way.  But it picks up at the end, and actually bothers to answer those moral questions.

If you're somebody who would enjoy a movie with more moral delimmas than explosions and gore shots of decapitated zombies, this movie is for you.