The Crazies is George Romero’s most frequently overlooked and under-appreciated film. Though it does not merit ranking alongside Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, upon closer examination, the production’s seemingly straightforward, simplistic plot reveals itself to be an articulate, well crafted, clever indictment and scathing, scathing critique of the Vietnam War.
Evans City, Pennsylvania is awoken one night to discover that the army, at the government’s behest, has declared martial law under the auspices of a recent contamination of the water supply. As the rural townspeople watch their civil rights ebb away, devastating, ethically-questionable proposals are being put forth in Washington which will inevitably change the world forever.
Many have commented that The Crazies is merely a retelling of the events witnessed in Night of the Living Dead, sans the metaphorical import of the undead and set upon a slightly larger scale. Indeed, from a purely empirical perspective this is true, however, such a one-dimensional assessment of the work deprives the succinct narrative of its potency as the film’s critical agenda is doubled from that of its predecessor’s, which is evidenced early within the picture in that, instead of polarizing his work by positing an underdog (circumstantial) minority as it center (the guiltless collective led by Ben), Romero exacerbates the facticity of the world by providing his viewer with a conglomeration of victims as he places one and all under the existential umbrella of a peaceful town that is unjustly terrorized.
Shortly after a cuckoo clock symbolically foreshadows the insanity which Evans City is about to experience firsthand, the Army appears. The military faction enters the closed territory (i.e. an established, self-sufficient town) and “quarantines” the populace in a manner which recalls the concentration camp method of isolation implemented by the Nazis during World War II (seconded by the burning of piles of the executed and the statement by Sergeant Tragesser (Ned Schmidtke), under civilian interrogation, that, “We’re [the soldiers] only following orders”). The Army does so after martial law has been declared and a shoot-on-sight edict has been abruptly passed. The justification for such? A deadly, highly contagious bacterial agent has recently appeared in the town’s water supply.
Though a seemingly reasonable action on behalf of an administrative body given the circumstances, we then learn that the contaminant, Codename: Trixie, is the product of the government. Moreover, it is then disclosed that Trixie was released upon an airplane crash six days prior. Granted, Romero has yet to point fingers for, until this time, everything which has been revealed is without a culpable party. However, the director presents his rub as Evans City’s dilemma escalates in severity to the point of government officials seriously humoring the notion of nuking the town in order to contain the pestilence. Initially, we experience great empathy for those involved, that is, until the questionable proposal is followed by the citation that the official report will state that an airplane training mission gone wrong will be the source of the tragedy. Thus, we are left to deduce that Evans City’s plight might well have been deliberate after the town was unwillingly chosen to be a test subject for an experimental weapon to be used in the Vietnam War effort (reinforced when it is whispered that the small supply of preventative is being issued to the soldiers and not the townsfolk, ergo, if the population of Evans City is doomed, the only feasible motive for the government postponing the inevitable is to garner more telling statistics). Thus begins Romero’s derisive exposé upon Vietnam.
As a Vietnam-chartered blackout fills the radio stations with muzak instead of news, toy soldiers are tramped under underfoot as militia hostilely remove a scared, confused family from their home. Cunningly, Romero permits us to catch a glimpse of a portrait of the family’s son, clad in uniform, who is undoubtedly enacting much the same overseas. The filmmaker makes further allusions to what he indubitably views as an unjust war as David (Will MacMillan) ironically quips, “How can you tell [the infected “Crazies” from the hysterical uninfected populace]?”–an obvious reference to the notorious My Lai incident in which American soldiers slew droves of innocent South Vietnamese because they were unable to distinguish between the Northern and Southern populaces. Intriguingly, the term “Crazy” is incorporated and utilized in much the same negative, objectifying, cooling manner as the label of “Gook” during “police action” (a phrase which Romero does not fail to mocking include in all of its semantically charged, Machiavellian intent at deference). Tony Williams, in his study of the director, The Cinema of George A. Romero, continues, “A priest burns himself in protest against the military like the Buddhist monk protesting against South Vietnam’s Diem regime. One character dies with a bullet through his head like the Viet Cong suspect in Eddie Adam’s famous 1968 photo. A helicopter chases a group of fugitives through the woods only to be shot down easily by a simple weapon similar to the Viet Cong’s frequent defeats of technologically-advanced enemies. During the round-up of civilians, a ‘crazy’ spits at a soldier’s gas mask. The action also recalls the many stories of returning soldiers from Vietnam being spat upon by anti-war activists at the airport.” Lastly, David makes the observation that “[The military] can turn a campus into a shooting war” in reference to a local school. Thus, Romero comprehensively includes an analogous critique of the Kent State massacre within the production.
Yet, in lieu of all of the temporal commentary, The Crazies nonetheless sustains itself outside of its historical relevance. More than a third of the populace of Evans City perishes as an indirect consequence of Trixie: The military and civilian factions prove to be a greater threat than the bacterial agent. If we suspend the idea that the government organized the infection, the true culprit is the lack of preparation and planning prior to the military’s appearance in the town as disorganization leads to countless innocent deaths. Of course, it would not be Romero is he failed to include a note of irony as the lost cure reverts the powers that be to attempting to find a human agent who is immune. As tragically ironic as it is doggedly condemning, we watch as the military dismisses a character, whom we know to be immune, on the basis of class, i.e. the unspoken mentality being “those types” could never be the ones responsible or able to save humanity. Yet, by film’s end, the ultimate question is not who is responsible for, once Trixie appears, the assignment of guilt is proven to be a futile, and potentially fatal (given its time consumption) effort. Instead, Romero–in much the same manner as Albert Camus’s The Plague, Howard Hawks’s Sergeant York, and David Fincher’s Se7en–makes us pause as we pit existential ethics against Marxism as we consider whether the rebels (objectors) have a right to flee despite the fact they are cognizant that, in so doing, they could infect the world’s populace or if they are obligated to suffer the consequences of another’s crimes for the greater good.
“You never now what you’re doing or why you do it,” mutters one soldier during the course of George Romero’s The Crazies, a phrase which could easy be representative of the whole of the film and, likewise, the director’s perspective upon Vietnam. Equal parts Night of the Living Dead and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (sans the humor), the film advances some of the ideas which its director first proposed in the former as it refuses to provide easy answers. Yet, if Romero did anything less, not only would The Crazies not be a Romero-par-Romero production, it would cease to be the epitome of what cinema has to offer.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
