The Crazies is a 1973 American science fiction horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. It stars Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, and Harold Wayne Jones as residents of a small American town that accidentally becomes afflicted by a military biological weapon. Filmed in Evans City in Western Pennsylvania, The Crazies was a box office failure upon release, but has since become a cult film. A remake of the film was released in 2010.
Plot
In Evans City, Pennsylvania, a man kills his wife and burns down his farmhouse. Firefighters David, a Green Beret, and Clank, an infantryman, both having served in the Vietnam War, are called to the scene. The man who burned down his home is handcuffed in the back of a police car, ranting hysterically. Meanwhile, David's pregnant girlfriend, a nurse named Judy, is called to the office of Dr. Brookmyre, where the two children of the arsonist are being treated for burns. Heavily armed U.S. troops in NBC suits and gas masks arrive in the town, and are being led by Major Ryder, who takes over Dr. Brookmyre's office. Days earlier, an Army plane carrying a bioweapon had crash-landed near the town, infecting the water supply with a virus code-named "Trixie" which is highly contagious and causes victims to either die or become hysterical and homicidally insane. In Washington D.C., government officials order Colonel Peckem to go to Evans City to help contain the virus, while scientist Dr. Watts is brought in to develop a cure. Martial law is declared in Evans City and a quarantine is placed on the town. Army soldiers forcibly move the townspeople into a high school, rousting many from their homes, and shoot anyone attempting to escape. Bombers armed with nuclear weapons are dispatched to destroy the town if necessary. In one house, a soldier encounters an elderly woman who stabs him with her knitting needle. A group of soldiers are killed by a mob armed with guns and dynamite, after which an infected woman happily sweeps the blood-soaked grass. A local priest, upset at the soldiers rousting his flock, douses himself with gasoline and sets himself on fire. David, Judy, Clank, teenager Kathy Fulton, her father Artie, and a sick man named Frank are confined to a large van by the soldiers. The van is attacked by infected people, and the soldiers try to fight them off. Frank wanders off, muttering, and is captured by the soldiers. Clank and David commandeer the van, and the five of them try to find a way to escape the town, spending the night hiding in a building of a country club. The next day, the group attempts to escape by traveling through the nearby woods, fighting off soldiers both on the ground and in an overhead helicopter. Later that day, they come across a house occupied by a handful of soldiers and David and Clank kill the sentries outside the house and hold three of the soldiers inside the house at gunpoint. One of the soldiers discloses what he knows about the virus to David, but when one of the soldiers reaches for his gun, Clank opens fire and kills the soldiers. David confides in Judy what he knows about the virus and tells her that Kathy, Artie, and probably Clank are infected. Going insane from the effects of virus, Artie attempts to rape Kathy. Discovering the pair, Clank beats Artie, who then apparently hangs himself and the next morning, a shaken Kathy wanders outside and is killed by soldiers. Believing himself to be infected, Clank kills several soldiers before being shot in the head, allowing David and Judy to escape. That evening, Judy, now visibly infected, is killed by armed civilians. One of the civilians recognizes David and identifies himself as a fellow firefighter, also uninfected and trying to escape. Angry and frightened, David surrenders to the military. After being taken into custody, David eventually realizes that he is immune to the virus, but he keeps the knowledge to himself. During all of this, the soldiers isolate Dr. Watts in the high school where the infected are being corralled, allowing him to use the simple chemistry lab inside. Watts insists that he might find a cure in a proper laboratory but is not granted access to one, and when Watts develops and goes to share a possible cure he is mistaken for one of the infected and forced into quarantine by the soldiers. The test tubes containing the possible vaccine are shattered after the doctor is pushed down a flight of stairs by a stampede of infected persons and is killed... along with the knowledge of a possible cure. In the final scenes, a distraught Colonel Peckem is ordered to relocate to Louisville, where symptoms of the virus have been reported. After passing a medical test, he boards a helicopter and departs.
According to Romero on the DVD commentary track, this project began life with Paul McCollough, who authored a screenplay entitled The Mad People. The script dealt with a military bioweapon that was accidentally released into a small town, with the military subsequently trying to cover up the incident and the townspeople revolting. Romero revealed that the military subplot was only featured in the first act of the script, and the rest of the film focused on the survivors and their attempts to cope with what was happening. The director called McCollough's script "very existential and heady". The screenplay was read by Lee Hessel, a producer who owned Cambist Films and with whom Romero had previously worked on There's Always Vanilla. Hessel expressed interest in it and offered to finance it as Romero's next film, but only if the director would be willing to rewrite McCollough's screenplay to focus on what Hessel considered the most interesting ingredient of the story, namely the military takeover of the town, which occurred in the first 10 to 20 pages. Romero agreed and rewrote the script, and he was given a budget of approximately $270,000. The film was shot in and around Evans City and Zelienople, both small towns in Pennsylvania about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. Romero has spoken of how the majority of people in the towns were very cooperative and happy to help with the production. On February 23, 2010, the film was released on Blu-ray by Blue Underground, the same company who first issued a DVD release on April 29, 2003. It was later re-released with a new 4K restoration by Arrow Video as part of a boxset entitled George A. Romero: Between Night and Dawn. It was later released separately on March 13, 2018.
Reception
Box office
The film did not have a wide release, instead playing in a limited number of theaters before opening in a different market. Romero later claimed he felt that the major reason The Crazies failed at the box office was due to poor distribution. He stated that Hessel made a true attempt to adequately market the film, including releasing it under a variety of titles in different parts of the country, but that it never managed to catch the public's eye.
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Crazies holds an approval rating of 65% with an average rating of 5.44/10, based on 23 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Crazies isn't top-shelf Romero, but its blend of genre thrills and social subtext should still be enough to satisfy discerning horror fans." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 6 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."
