How George A. Romero’s Extremely R-Rated Sci-Fi Was Overshadowed By The Living Dead Franchise

By Brian Myers
| Published 15 seconds ago

Director and screenwriter George A. Romero has long been regarded as the godfather of the modern zombie film. The late filmmaker certainly earned that moniker, with his debut feature Night of the Living Dead forever changing Hollywood’s conception of what these undead creatures are. In the decades that followed his 1968 opus, Romero continued the “Living Dead” saga with five additional films. Remakes and spinoffs from other filmmakers followed, each one paying homage to the original master to varying degrees.

But somewhere in between the film that began his career and its 1977 follow-up Dawn of the Dead lies a largely forgotten sci-fi horror movie that deserves its due. Far from the successes that any of Romero’s zombie films enjoyed, the 1973 film The Crazies is certainly one worth revisiting. 

A Sci-Fi Horror Slaughter

The film opens in a farmhouse occupied by a family of four. While the two young children are playing, the father comes into frame, destroying everything in his path with a crowbar. As the young girl runs to her mother’s bedside for help, she makes a chilling discovery. The woman had been beaten to death while she slept.

The father then ignites the kerosene that he dumped all over the floors of the house and sets it aflame. The two children escape with severe burns and are tended to in the local clinic. When nurse Judy arrives to help the town doctor, she is greeted by a group of men in full HAZMAT gear who are scrambling to set up and distribute equipment. As Judy tries to make sense of what is happening, she overhears a heated conversation between Dr. Brookmyre and the military officer who has seemed to take over the clinic.

Major Ryder reveals that a devastating bio-weapon, code-named “Trixie,” was accidentally released into the local water supply days before when the military plane carrying it crashed near the town of Evans City, PA. The chemical infects those exposed to it with a highly contagious disease that causes homicidal mania in those who survive initial exposure.

With a mandated press blackout and a government quarantine that has sealed off the community, the townspeople are cut off from the outside world. Donning gas masks and white protective gear, military personnel go from home to home and round up citizens, herding them into the school gymnasium. Anyone who attempts to run is shot on sight.

More Layers Than Your Typical Romero Film

The Crazies brings three forms of horror onto the screen for audiences. Initially, the concept of madness from an unknown disease is a terror that viewers are forced to reckon with when the farmer goes berserk during the opening moments of the film. A more realistic horror then begins to unfold as the military is shown forcing its way into homes and executing civilians. Finally, the dangers of mob mentality grip you with fear. The civilians who evaded capture (some infected with the virus, for sure) began to revolt and kill the soldiers. While an understandable reaction, it’s this very mentality that leads to the devastating fate of the town and possibly the rest of humanity.

The Crazies packs in multiple chilling scenes, making it worthy of a Romero film. In one sequence of events, a farmer begins shooting troops out of his window as his wife attacks one with her knitting needles. These acts of desperate violence play out while the couple’s young daughter plays the piano, seemingly oblivious to the carnage that is unfolding in front of her.

In another scene, an infected minister is shown running from his church with a can of gasoline. As he screams prayers, he douses himself with fuel and lights himself on fire.

The film is a quick burn (no pun intended), with jarring action from the opening frames and throughout its entirety. As with so many other Romero films, the real horror in The Crazies is the one that man brings on himself. The director can bring to life a realistic man vs. man conflict without the zombie makeup or grotesque special effects, giving audiences a good sense of how these circumstances could play out in reality. 

Reimagined For A New Generation

Following the success of Romero’s Land of the Dead in the early 2000s, Paramount Pictures began to develop a remake of his overlooked masterpiece. After early negotiations fell through, the project was picked up by the now-defunct Starz Network vehicle Overture Films in 2008. With a modest budget of $20M, director Breck Eisner reimagined Romero’s early 70s feature into a vividly terrifying 101 minutes on the big screen.

Timothy Olyphant (Justified, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) stars as the Sheriff of the fictional rural community of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. Though the remake incorporates the bioweapon being released into the town’s water supply via a military plane crash, that’s where most of the similarities with the original end. It’s still a solid watch through and through.

You can stream the original version of The Crazies for free with Tubi. The big-budget remake is currently available on the Roku Channel.