The Crazies (1973) Romero obliterates small-town America in harsh anti-military satire (Review)

As with any Romero film, The Crazies is a politically charged satire that uses the language of the genre to take stock of what is happening in the world – with war and science fiction the tools adopted. Unlike other war films, Romero tracks both sides in Evans City, Pennsylvania. Our eyes on the ground are firefighter David (Will McMillan), nurse Judy (Lane Carroll), and firefighter Clank (Harold Wayne Jones). We join the trio as they attempt to evade the military and the looming infection that’s destroying their town. Meanwhile, a military contingent led by Major Ryder (Harry Spillman) is on-site in the attempt to contain [Trixie] a biological weapon that accidentally spilt into the town’s water supply. Their initial effort sees them forcefully direct townspeople to the high school – unfortunately, the biological weapon and the way the military ferries people around makes things take a turn for the worse. Trixie weaponises sanity whereby the exposed either end up dead or crazy beyond cure.

Romero’s target is the bureaucracy of government and military campaigns, targets which he goes after with insatiable gusto. The goals of this ‘invading force’ are to ensure the outbreak doesn’t spread beyond the city limits into wider America, expected protocol for such an incident. If only it was as simple as that as the suits the soldiers and scientists wear makes it impossible to work meaning their ability to research Trixie further or prevent further exposure is gravely hindered. A running idea throughout is that the containment force has been given a difficult job with little to no information, resources or time to prevent further exposure. Only that isn’t the limit of this disaster as at the heart of any mobile communication is a minefield of bureaucratic red tape that makes any conversation subject to a series of identity tests. “The left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” is the proverb, only in Romero’s hands – the left-hand doesn’t even know whether the right hand exists.

The Crazies opens on a farmhouse with two children playing in the middle of the night, interrupted by crashing furniture they run to their mother only to find her dead, killed by their dad who is now in the process of setting the house on fire. Not 5 minutes later the dad is crying about what happened, oblivious to the fact that he was the one that caused it all. This is what Trixie does and it’s in the towns water supply meaning its only a matter of time before the entirety of the town falls to this weapon. That is why the government sent a military presence and its also why Romero periodically edits in a slowly approaching plane carrying a nuclear payload, creating an effective ticking clock.

Firefighter’s David & Clank and Judy are our men on the ground – through them, we see how oblivious the soldiers charged with this duty are and the increasing mania of those infected by the weapon. At first, the trio merely attempts to survive, finding a father and daughter along the way. This is a slow burn presented by a man who invented the language for creeping infection, what starts as surviving turns to defending which turns to offensive moments which concludes with an outright combative paranoid psychosis in which the victim has no control over what they are doing. The father and daughter are key in depicting how pervasive Trixie is and the non-discriminating doom that dominates the fate of every single soul in this version of small-town America. Biological weapons are very real as is the incompetence of joint military/government operations, and together they turn the Crazies from a tense potboiler into an alarming ‘what if’.

All of Romero’s Pre-Dawn work has grime, grain, and dirt akin to any number of low-budget early 70s horror and exploitation; Wes Craven, early John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, all these big names had films that looked the same in this regard. Where some of these films look dated by way of their low budget, some, the Crazies, specifically are made by this grime. As ever, Arrow Video understands this and even though significantly cleaned up, it still looks like a deeply dirty film – it just wouldn’t be the same film without it, that is where its power comes from.

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