The Crazies, (1973)

     Evans City, PA, a town of 3613, is ground zero for an outbreak of a bio-weapons virus that turns people into violent, raving loonies. The army swoops in and attempts quarantining the citizens. There's yer nutshell.

     If you were to take the “undead” out of the zombie genre and focus on the viral infection aspect, with particular emphasis on the military response then you'd get an idea about what The Crazies was trying to convey.

     True. It is NOT a zombie film, but a) it is about a contagious virus, b) said virus turns people homicidally crazy and c) it was directed by Romero, so deal with it! It’s in!

     The main atmosphere of the movie is one of paranoia: the townsfolk being rounded up out of their beds without explanation by the masked military for quarantine, the townsfolk on the lam who don’t know what is going on, the ones who DO know and worry about catching the virus, and even the military… ESPECIALLY the military, clad in gas masks and hazmat suits, sweeping the town for the unaccounted for, and with jets circling overhead to nuke the town. 

     Y'see, this was 1973. Biological weapons had replaced atomic weapons as the terror de jeur, with the Biological Weapons Convention and Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. Germ warfare was the new nuclear fallout, communism and McCarthyism rolled into one neat invisible package. (It also made it an ideal device for SO many zombie movies to come.)

      As the virus makes itself known to citizen after citizen, a small group makes their way to escaping. A young nurse and the father of her soon-to-be leading the way. With them are his buddy, who slowly shows increased violent tendencies, and a man and his daughter, who clearly is not thinking clearly. A natural immunity is believed to exist among a few humans and the leader of this group may well possess it, but this is known, or rather suspected but almost no one, and the struggle continues.

      So, The Crazies is NOT a zombie film. Is it wrong to grade it as such? Maybe. But screw it. My house, my rules! (Oh! Now I see how that works, Dad! Thanks!) 

     Although the Ol’ Zombie Movie Rubrick tallied a 2.375, I saw it more as an enjoyable period piece, and a nostalgic look back at the mindsets, fears, (and hairdos,) of the seventies.

The official movie trailer is YouTubably viewable here for a tease: THE CRAZIES

I gotta say, it was great seeing the future Dr. Millard Rausch, (the eye-patched scientist from Dawn of the Dead,) Richard France, playing his scientist role, (AKA, the only one with a clue,) in a proactive position in this movie, much of a difference as it made.

"You have to listen to me..." Spoiler alert: Nobody ever ever listens.