Crazies, The: The George A. Romero Collection (1973) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Audio Commentary-Feature length by director George A. Romero TV Spots-(05:46) A collection, with some damage. Gallery-172 Lobby cards, publicity stills, production stills. Biographies-Crew-Twenty screen bio of director. Trailer-(01:00) Original Theatrical Trailer Teaser Trailer-(00:30) Original Theatrical Teaser Trailer-(02:01) Spontaneous Combustion (Umbrella Horror) Trailer-(01:52) Candyman (Umbrella Horror) Trailer-(03:31) The Driller Killer (Umbrella Horror) Trailer-(03:25) The Mask of Satan (Umbrella Horror)
Rating
Year Of Production	1973
Running Time	98:48
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (72:19)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	George A. Romero
Studio Distributor	Cambist Films Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Lynn Lowry Lane Carroll W.G. McMillan Harold Wayne Jones Lloyd Hollar Richard France Richard Liberty
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	Box	Music	Bruce Roberts Carol Bayer Sager Melissa Manchester

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, Minor characters
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, Three minutes prior to credits, and during.

    George A. Romero has built himself a reputation as a director of exploitation films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Despite his first film being made on a shoestring, Romero's  flesh-eating zombies chilled audiences and walked again  ten years later in Dawn of the Dead, generally considered to be a masterpiece of its genre. In the years immediately following his auspicious debut, Romero's next three films, There's Always Vanilla (1971), Season of the Witch (1973) and The Crazies were less successful, but these titles are of genuine interest to admirers of this individualistic director. Fans of Romero will more than welcome Umbrella Entertainment's release of  the George A. Romero Collection, a three disc set which includes The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977) and Dawn of the Dead (1978).

    Romero's screenplay, with its origins in Paul McCollough's unfilmed piece called The Mad People, begins with a gripping precredit sequence depicting two children, terrorised by their father who has gone insane, who find their mother murdered in her bed.We learn that this family resides in Evans City, Pennsylvania. A military plane carrying a biological-warfare agent, code named "Trixie", had crashed in a field near Evans City, resulting in chemical spill entering the town's water supply. Evidently exposure to this chemical agent will cause death and/or insanity. A team of military specialists moves into the town to clean-up, while the possible dangers are concealed from the inhabitants of the town. The townspeople view the military "invasion" with hostility, and before long contamination from the spill has infected the residents and members of the military. Otherwise inexplicable outbreaks of extreme violence begin to occur amongst those infected while the white suited invaders attempts to maintain order, and their commanders suppress information. A small group of residents decides to flee from the town and hide on the outskirts, but, unknown to them, there are some in the group who are already contaminated by the virus.

    The plot of the film is its strongest aspect. Beginning with a sound basic idea, the effects of the spill on all concerned are explored interestingly, with us faced with the ultimate question of "who is madder", those infected or those in charge. With obvious parallels to Viet Nam, with invasion, chemical warfare, self-immolation and genocide, combined with the political climate of Watergate cover-ups and the general duplicity of government, there are strong allegorical elements which are obvious while not hitting the audience over the head with the parallels. It is a shame that the film was made with such a limited budget, only $270,000 we learn in the director's commentary.There are flashes of inventiveness and technical savvy, but more often than not the film is pulled down by a pedestrian filming style, with some set-ups totally stagey and stiff (40:30). Also detracting from the impact of the drama is extremely poor audio and some just plain bad acting. The "pros" are generally sound, with W.G.McMillan and Lynn Lowry (Shivers) laudable, but the recruited townspeople are extremely bad in minor roles and scenes as "extras". The rioting high school students is undoubtedly the worst sequence,  with a few instances of directly eye-balling the camera. What the film does have is an undeniable energy, undoubtedly stemming from the passion and enthusiasm of the thirty-three year old director, pushing his film along despite the pressures of time and money. These positive flashes occur in the opening, in one of the last scenes filmed around a structure of concrete masonry bricks, and a very well-handled exciting  helicopter chase sequence.

    The restored image looks very good. In the commentary Romero says it looks better than in its original theatrical release, and the image is certainly sharp, bright and consistent. Director of photography S. William Hinzman makes a major contribution to the success of the film, despite the occasional flat sequences.On the other hand, the music adds nothing to the film, whether the original "score" by Bruce Roberts, the commercial recordings used, or the theme song Heaven Help Us by Carol Bayer Sager and Melissa Manchester, sung by the latter at the end of the film. The music is certainly not assisted by the general tinniness of the sound, in particular the at times relentless banging of what sounds like a child's tin drum. Perhaps this was meant to invoke Dr Strangelove, another film where the military is mad, but the device is grossly overused.

    In its initial release The Crazies was a box-office flop, Romero attributing the failure to bad marketing. The disheartened director turned to making documentaries for the next few years, not returning to feature films until 1977 with Martin. Interestingly there is a remake of The Crazies in the Hollywood pipeline as I type, to be directed by  Breck Eisner (Sahara). Undoubtedly this new version will be more polished, but I wonder if it will have the thematic integrity of Romero's flawed box-office failure.

Video

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three audio streams:   Dolby Digital 5.1 stream encoded at 448 Kbps;
                                                     Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Encoded at 224 Kbps; and
                                                     Commentary track which is Dolby Digital 2.0 encoded at 224 Kbps.
    
    The entire feature was watched listening to the 5.1 stream, and the 2.0 stream was sampled, with little difference in the impact of one over the other.
    There was little to indicate that this was a 5.1 listening experience, with little direction across the fronts, very little separation, and only ambient animal effects and some music in the rear channels. I doubt if the subwoofer ever came alive.
    The overall sound had a hollow, tinny quality, although there was no difficulty with the dialogue.
    There were no sync problems, no crackle, pops or dropouts.
    The extremely sparse musical score sounds hollow, and the militaristic drum sounds like someone banging on a dustbin lid.
    Romero's honest commentary spends much time lamenting the quality of the sound in the film, detailing the limitations imposed by his budget. Visually the film at times belies these restrictions, but sadly this is not the case with the sound.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu:
Presented 1.85:1 and 16x9 enhanced. There is no animation, but it does have audio of Sager/Manchester theme song.
Options presented are :
        Play Feature        
        Audio Setup : The options are : Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
                                                        Dolby Digital 2.0                        
        Select Scenes : Eighteen scenes listed on three screens, without any stills, audio or thumbnails.
        Special Features : As detailed below.
        
Special Features :

Audio Commentary : 
Feature length commentary by George A. Romero in an interview/chat situation.
This is an enjoyable, relaxed discussion recorded in August, 2002. It had been fifteen years since Romero had last seen his film, and at first he seems rather hazy about it all. As the discussion progresses he warms up, and he acquires total recall, resulting in some enjoyable and human insights into the problems and joys of film-making under severe budget restrictions. There are open acknowledgements of the flaws in the film, including the music and the sound recording. Evidently there were no post production facilities for sound recording at all. The logistics of getting a small flock of sheep to move cued to a death of a principal were fun to hear - it was the actress who was on cue, not the sheep. She died when they moved, not the other way around. After all that intensity of work Romero then had to see his film fail at the boxoffice. His name was not yet established, Night of the Living Dead not having built its following, and no successful marketing strategy was found. They even tried changes to the title. In frustration Romero turned to documentaries for the next four years.
    This is an informative, frank and unpretentious insight into the creative process - on a budget!

TV Spots (05:46) :
Presented 1.78:1 and 16x9 enhanced, this is a collection of TV spots promoting the film. There is some damage at the beginning but the condition then improves.


Stills and Poster Gallery :
A very comprehensive - a total of 172 -  collection of publicity photos, production stills, lobby cards, posters and reviews. The majority are black and white, while the final forty-four, with the title change to Code Name : Trixie, are in colour.

George A. Romero Biography :
This is a comprehensive twenty screen coverage of Romero's films from 1968's Night of the Living Dead through to Bruiser in 2000, with poster reproductions of all of his films.


Original Theatrical Trailers : (01.00 and 00:30)
* The original theatrical trailer presented 1.78:1 and 16x9 enhanced. There is some damage at the very beginning of footage.
* The original theatrical teaser presented 1.78:1 and 16x9 enhanced.



Horror Trailers :
Spontaneous Combustion (02:01) : Ratio 1.85:1, 4x3 transfer.
Candyman (01:52) : Ratio 1.33:1, 4x3 transfer.
The Driller Killer (03:31) : Ratio 1.33:1, 4x3 transfer. This is not an actual trailer, but one continuous sequence taken from the film.
The Mask of Satan (03:25) : Ratio 1.85:1, 16x9 transfer. This is very nice quality, black and white, interesting cinema trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall