Romero's The Crazies

I've often thought about watching this film, but usually fear that it would be too zombie-esque. Is this film worth my time, or am I better off staying in Romero's Dead films?

It's decent, but not great-- if you haven't seen any of Romero's non-dead films, I think "Martin" is a better choice.

I saw this movie in a theater before Romero did a Q&A session. Some people were laughing at the dialog and acting (surprise surprise), but I thought it was effective. It doesn't feel too zombie-esque but the crazy virus is roughly analagous to zombie-ism. It's more about the government (poorly) trying to control mass chaos. I dig the rough, almost-documentary style.

It's been years, but it was pretty good. I thought it stood on its own, it does kind of have that "First fifteen minutes of DAWN OF THE DEAD" feel but it seems different enough to warrant your attention.

Apparently there's a remake shooting in Georgia as we speak.

If you want to watch a Romero picture outside of the zombie stuff, it's gotta be MARTIN. That's a hugely underrated film. It suffers from cheapness and some sloppy writing but it's smart, savvy, and strangely affecting. It doesn't need a remake, but it does make me wish it was made 20 years later.

Michael Barnes wrote:

It's been years, but it was pretty good. I thought it stood on its own, it does kind of have that "First fifteen minutes of DAWN OF THE DEAD" feel but it seems different enough to warrant your attention.

Apparently there's a remake shooting in Georgia as we speak.

If you want to watch a Romero picture outside of the zombie stuff, it's gotta be MARTIN. That's a hugely underrated film. It suffers from cheapness and some sloppy writing but it's smart, savvy, and strangely affecting. It doesn't need a remake, but it does make me wish it was made 20 years later.

Yeah, MARTIN is really good. There was a time before every movie Romero worked on was BLAH OF THE DEAD. I never actually THE CRAZIES--had too much of a "hippies gone wild" look for me. I saw RABID, DON'T LOOK NOW, THE TENANT, ROSEMARY'S BABY, the BODY SNATCHERS remake--I figured that was my quota of 70's ~everyone is crazy~ movies.

I saw a special FX VHS about Tom Savini that had a ton of scenes from MARTIN in it. That is one intensely gory film--not zombie gore, but like real wound gore. Kind of nasty stuff.

I thought The Crazies was absolutely terrible, though I don't remember much about it now except that I found it very hard to stay awake while watching it even though it was the middle of the afternoon. At one time I was interested in Romero's movies outside of his zombie stuff but this one turned me off that idea.

the barefoot killer wrote:

I thought The Crazies was absolutely terrible, though I don't remember much about it now except that I found it very hard to stay awake while watching it even though it was the middle of the afternoon. At one time I was interested in Romero's movies outside of his zombie stuff but this one turned me off that idea.

Pretty much the same story for me. Although I was pretty drunk when trying to watch it, so that might have something to do with it.