Co-presented by The Chicago Film SocietyNot to be confused with the post-apocalyptic Vincent Price vs. zombies pic adapted from Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND, the silent version of THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is a work of speculative science fiction super-charged by festering 19th Amendment anxieties. It’s 1954 and the world has been beset by a global pandemic of masculinitis, a disease that mysteriously kills off all men aged fourteen years and older. Eventually one straggler (Earle Foxe) is discovered in the forest, a tree-dwelling Rip Van Winkle utterly unprepared to become a planetary sex symbol. (His childhood crush once taunted him, saying she wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man on earth. Who’s laughing now?) Foxe is soon set upon by female gangsters, female politicians, female scientists, female everything. The climax even comes down to an extended boxing match between the “Senatoresses” from California and Massachusetts! “The girls really amount to very little, except that there are so many of them,” lamented Variety. “In fact the picture is just a super bathing-girl comedy and would prove a great attraction for the average burlesque houses.” Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation BONUS: This screening will be preceded by the short cartoon “It’s the Cats” (Fleischer Studios, 1926, 7 min, 16mm)