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The Crazies
It’s a curious thing: In Night of the Living Dead and its subsequent sequels, low budgets, cheap production values, and buckets of fake gore all work to George Romero’s favor, creating surreal, gripping horror films that provide fascinating parables on social and moral decline in America. Yet when Romero uses all of the above elements here, in a non-zombie film, they somehow work against him. It’s difficult to ascertain why these elements do not play out in this sci-fi thriller when Romero is able to brilliantly bring them together for horror films. Sans flesh-eating zombies, all of the typical elements of Romero’s slate seem to be here. The Crazies is first and foremost a social commentary, and it is the director’s direct attack on the policies of the Vietnam War (Dawn of the Dead, which also nodded to the war, dealt primarily with post-traumatic stress syndrome). It concerns a deadly virus that has somehow been turned loose in the small town of Evan's City, Pennsylvania. It has nearly a 100% fatality rate, and those who do not die are turned into “crazies”—mindless killing machines driven insane by unspeakable rage. Communism, of course, could also be read as mind-altering, brainwashing disease, and the government’s actions in The Crazies are a direct challenge to America’s response to the Red Scare: Instead of attempting to deal with the problem logically and diplomatically, the government sends in the army to round everyone in the city up by force and haul them away in the backs of trucks. Anyone who resists is shot. Lots of people die, and no one is informed about what’s going on, so they don’t understand why they are being so mistreated. The army doesn’t seem to have much idea either—they are simply obeying orders. In the meantime, priests light themselves on fire in the middle of the street in protest, and the mindless killing continues, via both the infected and the panicking troops. All this probably sounds familiar if you know anything about the Vietnam War. What Romero has clearly done here is transplant the Vietnam conflict into suburban America. He attempts to point out the flaws in U.S. officials’ hasty plans for going into Vietnam and the eventual mindless slaughter that consequently took place on both sides. But his intentions are not entirely anti-war: Romero does not excuse the disease that drives people mad—it is clearly a terrible problem—and he likewise does not excuse the atrocities that were going on in North and South Vietnam before America got involved. What he is suggesting, however, is that Americans had a responsibility to deal with the problem diplomatically, and we failed in the task miserably because our priorities were not straight. The scientists and officials in The Crazies are more concerned with locating and controlling the disease than they are interested in protecting human lives. This is a clear parallel to the war-time United States, which was more interested in stopping Communism from spreading than they were actually worried about the atrocities that humans were committing against each other in Vietnam. This sounds like a fantastic metaphor, and it is. George Romero remains the greatest commentator on American society, at least in the world of cinema, because of the way he masterfully weaves his fables together so that they hit us more directly than a literal sermon on these topics would. Consider the original Night of the Living Dead, which is Romero’s direct attack on racism in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. That film concerns a group of people who are trapped in a farmhouse as an army of cannibalistic zombies gather outside. By making the main character an African American and pitting him against an antagonist that is a Southern white male, Romero reveals the utter ridiculousness of racism. The white man refuses to go along with the black man’s plans, even though the black man clearly has a strong leadership ability that could potentially save the group. Clearly, the white man isn’t interested in the black man’s opinion on the basis that he is black, even as the hungry dead have them trapped helplessly inside an unstable house. The brilliant thing about that film is that race is never discussed by the characters, but for a 1960s audience, it didn’t need to be. By making the protagonist an African American, Romero has said enough, and audience members in the 60s would already assume that the white man is a racist. Thus, Romero creates a clear indictment of 1960s society without even uttering a word about it. Romero uses the same approach for The Crazies, but for some reason, the film simply does not come together. The script is clever enough, featuring interesting if typical characters for this genre: We are given the town sheriff ( Will MacMillan), his pregnant girlfriend (Lane Carroll), and his deputy (Harold Wayne Jones) who take a stand against the army and gather a small following of resistance who hide in the woods. On the opposing side is Richard France as the leading scientist who wants to combat the disease and Lloyd Hollar as the colonel in charge of the entire botched operation. All of these characters are well-written. In addition, Romero shoots with comic-book like colors (in another foreshadow of Dawn of the Dead) that place a dream-like haze over the picture that works to make the featured gore and violence startling but not lifelike, so that it demonstrates depravity without becoming its victim. The storyline, metaphors, and characters are clearly on target. So what’s the problem? I think that The Crazies fails because it does not work on two simpler levels: A) The low production values, and B) Romero’s stilted direction. In the Dead films, we are dealing with zombies, which lends themselves to B-level budgets. Staggering, moaning dead are equally terrifying and silly, and a limited budget and obviously bad special effects add to the charm, and even increases the horror by creating a documentary-like feel. Here, Romero is dealing with real people and is trying to create a potentially realistic scenario, so the low production values do not help him much. Wrong bullets for guns, unrealistic sound effects, and bad lighting so that it is often impossible to see what is happening distract us from Romero’s themes by reminding us that yes, it’s only a movie, and a cheap one at that. Romero also seems to direct on cruise-control. The camera angles are stilted and often unremarkable, as if he is simply pointing and shooting. There is a scene in the woods in which the sheriff and his men shoot at the attacking military platoon, and there are so few cuts that we have little idea which side is winning or, for that matter, what is happening. Much of the film is shot this way, and it generates more confusion and boredom than suspense. I can’t help but think of the noir-like elements that are so attractive in Night of the Living Dead (a zombie takes up the entire screen and slowly staggers backwards, revealing dozens of other zombies behind him), as well as the subsequent Dead films. Those films were shot with such passion, timing, and confidence; I wonder if Romero was simply distracted here. Maybe he was scribbling away on his screenplay for Dawn of the Dead and wasn’t paying attention. If that’s the case, I’m willing to forgive him. Romero’s greatest, most poignant films remain the ones in which he deals with his original creation, zombies, and I am delighted to hear that his next installment of that series, Land of the Dead (which is said to reflect an apathetic, post-9/11 society), is finally underway. The Crazies is an underwhelming film, but I nevertheless admired the director’s non-preachy methods of pointing out hypocrisy in America. This film is not the best example of his social commentary, but he nevertheless remains here an important artist. A.K.A. Codename: Trixie Cast: Cambist Films presents a Pittsburg Films production. Written
and directed by George A. Romero, from a story by Paul McCollough.
Rated R, for graphic violence, gore, intense scenes of war, and
brief sexuality/nudity. Running time: 103 minutes. Original United
States theatrical release date: March 16, 1973. |
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