The Crazies
1973 / 103min / 35mm
DIRECTOR: GEORGE A. ROMERO
CAST: LANE CARROLL, WILL MACMILLAN, HAROLD WAYNE JONES
Introduced by Josh Safdie and Robert Eggers.
A lesser-known work which can be seen as a stepping stone between Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, in which the effects of an outbreak caused by a spillage of psychosis-inducing chemical weapons in small town Evans City, Pennsylvania allows the master of disaster to exercise his gift for conjuring up a sense of mounting mass panic, and to explore his great theme—the total breakdown of human and institutional communication under stress. A virtuoso performance, in which you can feel the rising tide of madness.
The Crazies is screening as part of the series The Academy at Metrograph.