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The Crazies 1973 ★★★★
This George A Romero jumps straight into the action. An opening scene with two cute children in a house finding a crazy man tearing up the place. In fear, they look for their mommy and... oops.
What Romero does very well is show the chaos that comes with a crisis of this type. In 2022, we can not help but be reminded of the pandemic. But other than that? The inept reponse, the lack of adequate at the place where it is needed,...
Or the bureaucratic top secret hoo ha with the voice recognizer, much to the chagrin of Doctor Watts, a role in which Richard France already shows a few traits that would later come back in Dawn of the dead. One could even argue that The Crazies is sort of a proto-version of Dawn, with this one focusing more on the chaos that ensues (the epithomy of whcih being the scene where Doctor Watts gets quarantained after a misunderstanding), while Dawn starts with the pandimonium and focusses on what comes afterwards.
I was also struck by the sympathy I felt for some of the characters. I felt the same type of sympathy for the Fauci's of this world. I empathise with Peckem, a man doing an unrewarding job under difficult circumstances, with people seemingly existing to make your life a living hell. The frustration of the mayor is understandable and the scene where the policeman dies in a skuffle. He feels awful about it, even when he knows he did the "right thing". And I as a viewer feel for him.
The main characters are a pregnant nurse escaping with her fiancé and two people they come across. Whereas the characters in Dawn get a bit of relief, the air never clears for these people. With the threat coming from either the soldiers looking to kill or quarantaine them or the threat from the virus. Is this person traumatized? Or are they infected? Maybe, maybe not.
Throughout this pandemonium, Romero shows the horror and the creativeness, best shown with the nitting needle kill. All while remaining entertaining.
Well worth watching.
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