A biological warfare agent, Code Name: Trixie (also an alternative title for the film), accidentally finds its way into the water supply of the small town of Evans City, Pennsylvania. Victims of Trixie either die or go insane, their behaviour unpredictable. As the Trixie scientist on the scene desperately searches for an antidote – the omens are not good, seeing as nothing has been revealed in the previous three years of the project and Evans City doesn't have much in the way of specialist lab facilities – the army attempts to impose a quarantine and prevent any of the 3600-odd inhabitants area from carrying the infection beyond. But seeing as every outlying farmhouse appears to contains rednecks with firearms, it's not going to be easy…
Best summed up as Night of the Living Dead without the inexplicable aspect of the reanimated corpses, George A. Romero's The Crazies has not been without its influence – the recent 28 Days Later the most obvious – but has always been very much overshadowed by its predecessor and its sequels. This is a shame for, while perhaps not the epochal work that NotLD was, is still well worth watching.
Yes, the performances are by and large perfunctory. Yes, the effects work isn't up to much, with the splashes of red paint on white devo suits less than unconvincing. And yes, the poltical point scoring – critique of the inflexible, unimaginative military mind and cynicism of the authorities in the era of Watergate – is none too subtle:
"The man thinks that the army is our friend."
"The army ain't nobody's friend, man."
But, know what? None of this really matters. On the plus side the rudimentary performances and lack of familiar faces help give us a sense of real people in crisis and avoid that awkward 'X can't die' because they're a marquee name, the red reminds one of the EC Comic books that so inspired Romero and the lifting of Johnny Comes Marching Home / The Runaway Train on the score can't but bring to mind Dr Strangelove .
Again, though some aspects of the film are necessarily dated – the presumably giganormous computers circa 1973 or the hi-tech voice scramblers and descramblers on the secret phone link – the whole remains frighteningly up to date, with its exploration of the consequences of the agent when one unfortunate victim molests his daughter then kills himself in horror at what he has done so much more powerful, ultimately, than 28 Days Later's facile notions of "pure rage" and convenient ten second incubation period…
Having previously seen the film via a beat-up panned and scanned print on television, this 1.66:1 DVD from Anchor Bay is a revelation. Though The Crazies is not the sort of film you would think of using as showcase for the medium the transfer here comes very close – no mean feat for a 30-year-old obscurity. The detail is surprising, the colours vibrant, the blacks solid and damage minimised.
Audio wise, there is the choice of a new 5.1 remix and the original, whose perfunctory nature necessarily imposes limitations on what can be done. Still, at least both home cinema types and original version fetishists have an appropriate option available.
The extras package is a good one.
Pride of place goes to the commentary track which sees Romero in conversation with admirer/fellow director/Blue Underground impresario Bill Lustig. They swap stories of producer Lee Hessel – he had a pen that also functioned as a single shot .22 calibre derringer – and of the general business of low-budget film-making then and now, down to Arriflex 2C cameras, the ins and outs of different film stocks and the use of 'power windows' to improve the look of the day for night scenes in the DVD restoration.
Romero takes a critical view of the film, which he confesses to not having seen for 15 years or so, evaluating its unusual energy compared to other products from the same time as stemming, in part, from his disgregard – positive or negative – for classical continuity and other conventional niceties. Combined with his distinctive interest in the group rather than the individual, theme of communication breakdown and preference to end with order collapsed rather than restored, it's thus not hard to see how he has had such a difficult time trying to work within the system over the 30 years since.
All told, a commentary with something for Romero fans, exploitation buffs and aspiring cineastes.
The 14 minute interview with Lynne Lowry necessarily comes across as somewhat perfunctory by comparison, tracing as it does her career from c. 1970 to the present in a film by film manner. Still, with a resume that includes works by Lloyd Kaufman, Radley Metzger and David Cronenberg along with Romero, there cannot but be something of interest, whether it be the almost subliminal detail that her character in The Crazies actually loses her virginity to her father or her accidentally stabbing David Cronenberg for real with a fork on Shivers .
The trailers, meanwhile, serve as a further indication of the work that has been done on the DVD while the extensive gallery of stills and artwork – 200+ images – gives a further indication of the less than satisfactory distribution the film received (though, as Romero acknowledges in the commentary this was less a real failing on Hessel's part than a reflection of his relative inexperience and the 'nobody knows anything' state of the business at the time).
A Romero biography and a brief review of the film round out the package without adding anything.
Recommended.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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