The fire crew have never seen the like of it but soon similar incidents happen throughout the small Pennsylvanian town, people falling into sudden violent rages with lethal results. When the wife of one of the firefighters reports for duty at the hospital where she works as a nurse she finds it taken over by the army who are all wearing extreme hazard gear including gas masks. The town perimeter is closed and guarded. It gets worse: this is all happening because a military bioweapon leaked and got into the local population. As the army keep the line to the White House open, a B-52 is circling overhead with a nuclear payload, ready to render the area a memory.
Sounds like a nifty action thriller, doesn't it? Well, that doesn't carry a guarantee. George Romero whose redefined zombies changed that genre forever, can do his most effective work when he is pressed against the wall without a budget. He removed religion from the creation of zombies and left the resulting blank there as a troublingly unresolved puzzle. Later, he made a vampire movie about a boy who was condemned to live out eternity as a mixed up teenager. The rule is that when he is given a comfortable budget the originality wanes and he goes for things far more conventional. But even this rule has its exceptions and The Crazies is one.
This arresting premise, plucked ripe from the time of a war or dirty weapons in Vietnam, corruption from the top with the Watergate scandal, and continued civil unrest, might have really fuelled something but Romero, atypically with meagre means, produced a dragging us and them story which features both parties trudging in circles for most of its hundred screen minutes.
There are standout scenes and moments of poignant comment where bands of civilians charing on soldiers might equally be Crazies or just angry townfolk. The death of one character who in delusion welcomes the solders around her as angels before she is gunned down. There are skilful montages intercutting action with stock shots of military hardware mobilizing and, at its best, the film conveys the sense of an America run by its army as a nightmare worse than the director's own zombie hordes. As I saw this again I wondered if it wasn't just a lack in the drawing of the male characters. Romero would perfect this a few years later in Dawn of the Dead where the machismo was offered with depth and vulnerability which provided a roundness to the kind of pragmatic masculinity suggested in Night and Jack's Wife. Here it doesn't get the examination despite so much plodding in the pacing that might have been spent on development.
But this film's motion towards mediocrity cannot diminish it's creator's work even if it must skulk in the shadows of his achievements. It's frustrating to watch the promise of the stronger moments get stodged down with the dragging action of the main narrative. But Romero is a largely frustrating genre auteur. For every Dawn of the Dead or Martin there are annoying numbers of things like Creepshow, Bruiser, The Dark Half or most of the Dead films beyond Day. His power is inconsistent throughout his career timeline and the eloquence which he speaks of its markers will sound increasingly post factum the more a viewer investigates. David Cronenberg who was to emerge only two years after The Crazies did hold on to the dazzling concepts at the heart of his pioneering body horrors (and he would have made The Crazies a banger) which diminished only when he broke from this in a quest for the respectability of elevated themes. We don't like admitting it as Romero fans but his inconsistency is wide ranging and The Crazies just one of his movies that even big fans forget to mention. Well, to steal an early title for my own purposes, There's Always Vanilla. It's just that we like Rocky Road a lot better.
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