After the stunning success of Night of the Living Dead (1968), George Romero moved on to other projects, not wanting to do another "zombie" movie (the undead weren't actually called zombies in the movie, though.) For the next 9 years, Romero wrote and directed varying other independent low budget, genre psychological thrillers. One of those was a sci-fi government conspiracy thriller called The Crazies. Although the setting greatly differed from NotLD, Romero retained many of the basic elements in this film. Still without hugely financial success to gain big budget status and an office in one of those giant studios, Romero still had to face delivering his sociopolitical message to an ever-growing audience using as much as possible with very little money. With a $275,000 budget, a script in hand from his friend Paul McCollough and the freedom to edit it any way he wanted, Romero created this often-overlooked movie and may have satisfied a few of his followers until his cult classic, Dawn of the Dead (1978).

If there is one basic fact we fans of horror know...we LOVE George Romero. If it were not for his twisted mind in creating the zombie lore, who knows what the horror genre landscape would look like (I wouldn't even want to entertain the thought!) We bow to his every thick-brow movement behind those Mr. Magoo glasses and with a wave of his artistic hand, millions lay out in crowded tombs and go gut hunting with horrific glee. Underneath all of that gore, lies a man with a vilified attitude of how government ineptitude, military incompetence, and psychological and social divisions have misshapen our society and thinking. He faults the human race for creating its own problems and we will be the downfall of our extinction. So what would truly happen if the visions George has ever come true? With The Crazies that is exactly what George is trying to convey.

All hell breaks loose in Evans City, PA (the state commonly used in many of Romero's movies) when a government-engineered biological weapon is accidentally released. A plane carrying an experimental virus codenamed "Trixie" crashes into the local waters. Quickly spreading into the town's drinking water supply, the people of this small town go violently insane and do unimaginable things including murder. The scenes cut to tense discussions by a government panel informing the audience that the government has little hope for an antidote and will not hesitate in eradicating the town to prevent the spreading of the contagion. They order the town on military lock-down and immediately send soldiers to carry out the quarantine. They suggest to the President that a bomber carrying a nuclear warhead be on standby for when it is needed. From here, the real battle is between the townsfolk trying to escape and the soldiers ordered to stop anyone leaving. The story splits between two groups of characters and their roles in handling the outbreak.

Local firefighter David (Will MacMillan) and his pregnant girlfriend Judy (Lane Carroll) team up with his buddy Clank (Harold Wayne Jones) to figure out why a loving father would set fire to his house after killing his wife and leaving his children inside. They soon learn that soldiers are in their town setting up blockades. Judy returns from the town and informs them that it has been quarantined and the soldiers are there to prevent anyone from leaving the area. After seeing the violent way the soldiers are rounding up the residents, they feel it best if they just tried to get out of town. Later they pick up Artie (Richard Liberty) and his young daughter, Kathy (Lynn Lowry) and try to maneuver through the rural landscape while avoiding the soldiers who have orders to shoot on sight. However, as with any dire situation, things only get worse as each character begins to show the effects of the virus. As the group bitterly divides, the mood gets tense and it becomes difficult to differentiate who is more dangerous...the soldiers or the crazies. The movie also follows the point of view of the military commanders and soldiers. Colonel Peckem (Lloyd Hollar) is sent in to organize the quarantine but only finds incompetency from his superiors and paranoia from his subordinates. Col. Peckem brings in one of Trixie's co-developers, Dr. Watts (Richard France), to help find a cure but both argue over inadequate facilities and a lack of cooperation. Both the virus and paranoia create an air of insanity from all sides.

This movie contains many parallels to Romero's groundbreaking NotLD. Both movies are about survival against an unseen and unknown threat. Militaristic solutions are used for both containment and eradication and the line is blurred between who is infected and who's not. Those in charge are incompetent and misinformed. An African-American takes a lead role in the movie which was rare for a director to do in the early 70's, especially one making independent genre movies. And a basic premise that no matter what precautions people make, in the end, human error leads to costly mistakes. This movie is a reflection of the 70's - the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, the energy crisis, the 60's hangover - but does parallel more current problems - Iraq and Afghanistan wars; Hurricane Katrina; dotcom, bank and real estate crashes; recession. The look of the movie is very dated but the problems and the incompetence levels are same and can be construed as a reflection of any time period.

In my opinion, the major fault of this movie are in the characters as well as the actors themselves. Romero opens the movie in an amalgamation of quick-turn scenes without any context or character development. Without a relationship with the audience, I was less sympathetic with their perilous trek on an all too consistent basis. For the lead roles, Romero cast mostly unknowns and for many of them, this was their first feature film. He also cast the locals and supposedly even used the local high school students as containment soldiers. A few members of the cast were able to hold their own in most of their scenes, (MacMillan, Carroll and Hollar come to mind) but, there were many more occasions that the use of no-name actors really showed. For example, the over-enthusiastic acting of Richard France is hilarious but his method acting was too much to bear (he would later play the eye-patched TV commentator in Dawn of the Dead in the same over-the-top way.) The movie also had too much dialog and not enough action. Romero kept trying to shove too much of his anti-governmental stance down our throats and it was leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. It also left me hoping that someone would escape and spread the virus worldwide and put us out of our misery. Another thing that bothered me about this movie was the amateurish feel Romero had in directing this. Romero doesn't seem to have learned much from his previous movies, especially NotLD. Instead, he stuck with cheap thrills and even cheaper special effects, which should not have been the norm after his great initial success.

Despite the bad acting, characterization and feel, Romero does show promise with this movie and is able to create a few surreal and affective scenes - the old lady sweeping the tall grass in the middle of the gun-battle and the granny that stabbed a soldier with a knitting needle and afterwords, returns back to her crocheting. The story is a little ahead of its time but it gets too bogged down in dialog. As stated earlier, he does leave me with the hopelessness with humanity. If that was his goal, then he reached it with me although he could have done it more effectively. A great story but a lackluster effort in the delivery. Romero is a great director because of the major gems that he's given us and his name will be forever ingrained in horror lore. However, Romero has taken a step backwards with this outing but he will have made up for it with another zombie blockbuster in 1978.