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6
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9 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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SNEAK
PREVIEW
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DVD Release Date: April
29, 2003 |
Well-mounted
on a miniscule budget, George Romero's action-drama The
Crazies has often been referred to as a dress rehearsal
of sorts for his later horror epic Dawn
Of The Dead (1978). There's certainly more to the film than
that though many of the themes and imagery used are distinctly
similar. Both films examine the tearing of the social fabric
during a breakdown of civilization and the ensuing conflicts
between people caught up in the apocalypse. For the most part
The
Crazies lacks the clever
(though not exactly subtle) jibes at modern American society
that made Dawn so much more than
just a gory zombie movie. Rather than tipping the sacred cow
of American consumer culture, The
Crazies puts U.S. involvement
in Vietnam squarely in the crosshairs.
The plot is quite simple and straightforward. The accidental
release of TRIXIE, a top secret bioweapon developed by the Pentagon,
into a small Pennsylvania town soon has Army troops swooping
in to cordon off the area. A perimeter is established that lets
no one in or out. A complete news blackout is implemented. Citizens
are rounded up and herded into the local high school where they're
tested for infection and held for the duration of the crisis.
Anarchy erupts as contaminated townspeople become violently
insane — a symptom of the virus — and start attacking and murdering
the soldiers as well as each other. Evans City, PA (population
3,361) is a rural community so many of its people are well-armed
with hunting rifles and shotguns. The Army finds itself with
a war on its hands, combating not only infected townsfolk but
those who choose to resist the military's heavy-handed tactics.
Things really begin spinning out of control when some of the
soldiers start coming down with the virus, turning on their
comrades, while others take to looting from the civilians. Bureaucratic
snafus and pointless command and control protocols further hamper
the government response to the crisis. Higher-ups, well removed
from the scene, debate the use of a nuclear warhead to "burn
out the infected area" should the perimeter around Evans City
be breached. In the midst of the chaos a small group of citizens
— two 'Nam vet buddies (Will MacMillan, Harold Jones) who serve
in the town's volunteer fire department, a pregnant nurse (Lane
Carroll), a man (Richard Liberty) and his teenage daughter (Lynn
Lowry) — make a bid to escape the 'Hot Zone' and reach the outside
world.
That's
essentially it. The balance of the story focuses on the escapees
but frequently switches between them and the increasingly harried
colonel (Lloyd Hollar) placed in command of the town and a government
scientist (Richard France) working desperately in the high school
chem lab to come up with some kind of vaccine. The Vietnam allegory
reaches its zenith as the Army fails miserably to win the hearts
and minds of the confused (and virus-crazed) citizenry, resulting
in the destruction of the 'village' in the soldiers' fumbled
attempt to save it. A scene in which a delirious priest, to
protest the manhandling of his parishioners, douses himself
with gasoline and sets himself ablaze drives Romero's point
home with the finesse of a sledgehammer... Even though I was
only a young boy at the time, I'll never forget the famous news
photo of that Buddhist monk who immolated himself in just such
a fashion on the streets of Saigon.
So
is The
Crazies
a good movie? Yes, if you're willing to forgive the rough edges
necessitated by such low budget filmmaking. (Total production
cost was around $270,000.) Performances, naturally, are all
over the place given the mix of professional and amateur actors.
The masked, chemical suited soldiers all carry World War II-era
carbines instead of M16s, and a lot of the military characters,
especially the officers, sport hairdos that are much too long
for realism's sake. (One soldier, played by an actor who obviously
didn't want to cut his hair for the part, wears one of the most
ridiculous looking wigs I've ever seen.) The music score, consisting
mainly of martial-sounding snare drum rolls, is extremely limited
and often inappropriate. But compared to most other Romero films
this one clips along at a fairly rapid pace — quite a lot happens
in the first 45 minutes. The sense of urgency is heightened
by rapid-fire editing uncharacteristic of the average film of
the time; even stock footage (a scrambling B-52 bomber) is incorporated
into the picture in a fresh, unconventional way. The story,
and how it's told, kept me watching and involved. The then-contemporary
allusions to Vietnam can even be set aside. For what was essentially
just a plot device to set things in motion — the insanity-causing
bioweapon — now takes on a much greater immediacy in our post-9/11
world. This is a Thinking Man's exploitation film.
|
|
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Blue
Underground continues to impress with its new DVD edition of The
Crazies.
A semi-forgotten film at best, it nonetheless receives top notch
treatment here just as if it were a more significantly known title.
Surely the flick has never looked better, superior even to its
initial release prints. Working from the original negative BU
has done an excellent restoration job, to include correcting overly
bright 'day for night' shots (to Romero's subsequent surprise
and approval). Considering the film's low budget indie origins
the visual quality of the DVD is superb. The disc's audio doesn't
fare as well, unfortunately, with a very flat sounding mono mix,
but this symptom stems directly from the production limitations
of the film itself. For a 30-year old movie shot on a shoestring
the main audio track is eminently acceptable.
For
extras the DVD features the theatrical trailer, two TV spots,
a concise, well-written talent bio of Romero and a fairly large
image gallery of production stills/promotional materials. A 14-minute
featurette, The Cult Film Legacy of Lynn Lowry, is a delightful,
clip-filled interview/retrospective with the actress. A full-length
audio commentary with George Romero is moderated by director Bill
Lustig (Maniac), who also heads up Blue
Underground. It's an engaging, entertaining discussion that covers
just about every aspect of The
Crazies and especially
the perils and pitfalls of low budget filmmaking. (The two share
a collective groan at the sight of the wig-wearing soldier mentioned
above.)
4/21/03 |
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