The CRAZIES

(vt Code Name Trixie)

   Film (1973). Cambist Films. Dir George ROMERO, starring Lane Carroll, W.G. McMillan, Harold Wayne Jones. Screenplay Romero, based on a story by Paul McCollough. 104 mins. Colour.

   A plane carrying germ-warfare material crashes near a small US town and pollutes the drinking-water, causing an epidemic of homicidal and psychopathic behaviour in the inhabitants. The army moves in and the crazed brutality of the soldiers as they shoot victims of the virus (or trapped innocents) is as bad as the lunacy of their targets. There are strong similarities between this and Romero's best-known film, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), in that both involve a small group of trapped "normal" people surrounded by nightmare. Romero's exploitation movies are more ambitious than most - wittier, too - and this, as usual, has, half-visible through the blood, a political/cultural subtext about an uncaring society.

   JB/PN