The Crazies: Romero's Autobiography

I kid, I kid. It's not really Romero's autobiography. However, it's rather apt that one of his early films (after he established himself as a crazy person) would be so cleverly titled. Released in 1973 (five years after Night of the Living Dead), it was only his fourth movie.

Nobody in this movie is likely to be familiar to the average audience. The only thing I noticed is that the hero of the story looks a bit like Judd Hirsch (you know, that guy from Taxi?), but more fit, and with an immensely wicked and appalling unibrow. His partner Clank is probably suffering from PTSD, and is also a really goofy-looking S.O.B. I'm not entirely certain how such undeniably handsome gentlemen became the leads in this movie.

The film was remade last year, and is on DVD now. I need to check it out as well. (I'm also going to get on a kick to watch original horror movies and then their modern remakes to compare and contrast the methods of storytelling, plot, character, and how the elements of horror and how the horror is presented changes over the years.) Overall, the story revolves around a small town (as it always does) and its cache of quaint, fairly normal inhabitants (of course). Unbeknownst to David (Will MacMillan) and his pregnant girlfriend Judy (Lane Carroll), a deadly toxin ha seeped into the town's water supply. This toxin (codenamed TRIXIE of all things) causes people to turn against their neighbors, friends, and family, turning into raging, slavering, murderous slaves to their own impulsive ids. Of course, this is supremely dangerous (even though they tend to act violently, they are essentially free, which the 60s was all about). The powers-that-be decided that they would be best to nuke the living bejeesus out of Evans City, Pennsylvania.

The plot follows David and Judy, as well as his friend Clank (Harold Wayne Jones). David and Clank are firemen, and served in Vietnam together. When called to a house-fire, it becomes apparent that it was set on purpose. The military almost immediately swoops in and surrounds the town, putting it on lockdown, and sequestering the infected (or killing them, or both). I think we can assume how the movie ends from there.

As with NotLD, Romero seeks to make a statement through these films. The American Military (its infantry, its administration, inherent bureaucracy, extreme violence, etc.) is heavily featured. This is a general theme, even in Zombie films. It fits that the main characters are firemen; several of his zombie films feature police officers as survivor characters. The small town itself is an innocent; "Trixie" is released into the water supply when a government plane crashes in the outskirts of the town (prior to the events depicted in the film). The audience is treated to the backstory of these events by round-table discussions of military men (though they could be more corporate; most of them wear suits without displays of rank, affiliation, etc.).

The Crazies features zombies of sorts; it's interesting that they're so clearly and obviously explained away as being a toxic infection. It could have easily been a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, some interstitial zombie film between NotLD and Dawn of the Dead. But it isn't; it's The Crazies, the word "ghoul" or "zombie" or similar doesn't appear in the film. There is still the fear of the infected, the fear of turning. The warning signs appear on all the survivors except for David, and we dread the moment they turn. The military is quick to react, quick to gun down an infected person, no matter what.

The Crazies amps up the violence, gore, mutilation, and horror factor tenfold in the five short years after NotLD. There's blood, beheadings, incest (seriously, it's pretty messed up), and in general craziness. It went relatively unknown for quite awhile in larger circles, I think. The zombie films always get the most attention. I've been trying to find it for years; I'm lucky they remade it. It made it much easier to get via Netflix.

All in all, I'd recommend this movie to any Romero fan, horror fan, or general 70s zombie-style insanity. I'll have to check out the remake, as well, to see how they differ. Based on the trailer, I have a pretty good idea of what'll be different (I think David is a Sheriff and Clank is his Deputy in the new version).

I give it three and a half unibrowed Judd Hirsches out of five, or three and a half insanity-inducing government toxins named "Trixie" out of five.

I Got Your Comet, Right Here!

Ok, so this movie wasn't what I was expecting. As in, at all. The movie poster featured above tries very hard to make this film seem like one of the earlier, and better, zombie-apocalypse films that have come before it. What I didn't expect was for it to be an extremely 80s movie, with big hair, bright colored outfits on valley girls, and the girl that was in The Last Starfighter (which opened the same year).

Basically, the same comet that probably killed the dinosaurs is headed back near earth, and of course, it has captivated the imaginations of everyone in L.A. That's the only way to explain how there are so few survivors. Oh, yeah, by the way, the comet turns everyone into Ovaltine. Or, some sort of red dust. Except for Regina and her sister Sam, two typical southern California teenagers, obsessed with arcade games and cheerleading, respectively. Sam likes to wear magenta and turquoise, and Regina sleeps with the projector-jockey at the movie theater and is angered by "DMK" getting 6th place on her favorite arcade game. (It's one of those "hey, it's not technically important now, nor will it ever be, but we'll call back to it once before the movie ends" kind of deals.) They're such well-rounded and crisply developed characters! I'm so glad that they'll comprise roughly one quarter of all the characters in the film!

This is the problem that I've always had with movies from the 80s: music from the '80s is absolutely awful. Not all music, mind you, but more specifically, the 1980s idea of what good movie soundtrack music should be. Costs of synthesizers and electronic drum-machines must have been at an all-time low in that decade, because there's no other reason they would be so universally prevalent. Also, and I'm not even kidding, there is a mall montage to Cyndi Lauper. Because that's what we all want to do when the world ends and all of our loved ones and friends get turned into a delicious chocolate powder: Shopping spree!

There is most likely some sort of commentary hidden in that particular crap-fest. The first place that the girls go is the local radio station, where they're met by Hector, who appears sporadically through the rest of the film. They encounter maybe two comet-zombies by this point, and the first one kills Regina's boyfriend (played by Michael Bowen, who would later play "Buck" in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and molest a coma-stricken Uma Thurman). Where was I? Oh, yeah. The mall as a place of refuge during apocalypse was done much better in Dawn of the Dead, where it actually has some meaning behind it. In this film, they prance around for a little while, and they're then briefly attacked by the former stockboys, who have taken over the mall in some militant "white panthers" gang, although they've conceivably run into no other survivors up until this point. They're not very important, anyway, but I wanted to note that their "leader," a strange little man in a smoking jacket that he was somehow able to embroider his name upon, makes dumb comments like a TV show announcer, and it's extremely annoying. Man, that guy sucks.

There are also some scientists after them, briefly introduced in the beginning, seeming to know that the comet will powderize everyone (actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of like "dehydrating" the U.N. or whatever in the Adam West Batman movie). They come out when they hear the survivors on the radio, and apparently think that they can harvest the blood of survivors to make some strange serum to cure themselves. For you see, they weren't completely protected from the comet's effects: it managed to sneak into the air vents and infect them slowly. Apparently, that's what the zombies are all about: they're being "Ovaltined" more slowly, which, of course, entails a "bloodthirsty zombie" phase. So these dumb scientists are slowly turning into zombies/powder, and because Regina was asleep in a movie theater projection booth (apparently encased completely in lead, making it safer than a fershlugginer bomb shelter), they really want her blood for their serum. Makes sense, right? Of course, the whole time, there are synthesizers screeching away in the background.

In the end, they're able to somehow defeat the crazy scientists (though they would have eventually turned into Nestlé's Quik anyway), and then immediately become "mature," with Regina and Hector adopting two survivor children rescued from the scientist-place, even though everyone on Earth is still totally dead. Sam, the rebellious cheerleader who at first might have been vaguely infected, but then apparently got better, was all "Like, yuck, guys, what with the grown-up clothes and responsibility and blah blah blah *gum chewing*" And then, some hitherto-unknown and utterly random survivor shows up in a super-sweet '80s convertible. It's DMK! Holy crap, they call back to something from the first five minutes of the film in the last five seconds of the film. Truly, Thom Eberhardt is a cinematic treasure and a gift to all directors. Luckily, he brought similar genius to that all-time classic Captain Ron. Yeah, seriously.

It's definitely worth the watch, especially if you like that sort of thing. I recommend it, but not too highly. On a scale of "I loathed it" to "I loved it," I'll have to give it an "I saw it" rating.