History Film / TheCrazies

[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TheCrazies.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:[[BlatantLies The friendliest place on earth.]]]]

A 1973 horror movie by Creator/GeorgeARomero (of ''Film/LivingDeadSeries'' fame). A small town in Pennsylvania suffers from a string of violent attacks, ranging from beatdowns to arson. Firefighter David and his pregnant wife Judy are thrust into all this and to top it off, the military quarantine the town with orders to shoot anybody that escapes, regardless of being infected or not. David and Judy must try their damnedest to escape before the infected or the military get them.

Despite failing at the box office and getting mixed reviews, the movie gained a huge cult following. Its influence managed to get a remake in 2010; the town is set in Iowa with David and Judy now working as a sheriff and a doctor respectively as they still try to escape their town while avoiding the military and "The Crazies".
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!!The 1973 version provides examples of:

* ComeBackToBedHoney: David and Judy. "You ignore the fire signal and I'll ignore the ringing phone."
* CreatorCameo: Had the president ever turned around, the viewers would have seen it was director George Romero.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: David tries this but it backfires, causing Judy to flee in panic; then David is attacked by townspeople thinking he's a soldier [[spoiler:and Judy gets shot]].
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Dr Watts is killed and the cure smashed in a fight between soldiers (who assume Watts is infected and try to force him into a quarantined area) and the infected. Trixie had already spread beyond the town before the events of the film and infected a city. The one character who is immune keeps silent about it out of spite.]]
* EnemyChatter: Exchanged between GasMaskMooks in several scenes.
* EvilArmy: Played straight from the view of the townspeople. Subverted by showing {{Reasonable Authority Figure}}s acting under conditions of great stress, limited time, information and resources, and idiotic restrictions from higher authority.
* GunStruggle: The first indication that things are starting to go pear-shaped. The town sheriff resists being forcibly disarmed by the military, and ends up being fatally shot.
* HeroicSacrifice: Clank realises he's infected and draws off the soldiers chasing his friends.
* IdiotBall: The security restrictions hamper any attempt to deal with the crisis effectively. The top scientist on the Trixie project is sent into the town to do a job that any lab technician could do, then he's not allowed to send blood samples out of the city due to the quarantine.
* InvisiblePresident: Only the back of the President's head is seen, made all the stranger by having him only appear on a VideoPhone screen.
* TheImmune: [[spoiler:David. Too bad he's the only person in town they never test for immunity, and is too angry over what's happened to tell them.]]
* ImprobableWeaponUser: The infected old lady who stabs a soldier with her knitting needles.
* JustFollowingOrders: A bureaucrat gets frustrated by the slow response to the crisis, and orders the next available member of the Trixie team into the crisis zone. Cue Dr Watts futilely arguing with the military police driving him to the plane that it makes ''no'' sense for the developer of the Trixie virus to be sent into the town where he doesn't have access to his laboratory or computers; all they need is someone to take samples.
-->'''Soldier:''' I'm sorry, sir. Those are the orders.
-->'''Dr Watts:''' Orders, my ass! Stop the car! ''(they don't)'' You're going to have a hell of a time getting me on that plane, soldier.
-->'''Soldier:''' Maybe so, sir, but we'll do it.
* ManOnFire: One of the soldiers burning bodies goes crazy. He gets torched with a flamethrower. Also a priest goes mad and [[RuleOfSymbolism imitates a certain Buddhist monk]].
* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Kathy just gives a quiet "Oh" after being fatally shot.
* MilitariesAreUseless: Because ArmiesAreEvil and plagued with severe amounts of obstructive protocols, which people adhere to even when they make things worse.
* ModestyBedsheet: Averted -- well it was TheSeventies!
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Artie after realising he's had sex with his own daughter. He goes and [[DrivenToSuicide hangs himself]] (assuming Clank didn't kill him).
* NukeEm: A SAC bomber is kept on permanent patrol above the town, [[spoiler:though it's never actually used.]]
* PapaWolf: Subverted. Artie is too scared to protect his daughter Kathy effectively, and ends up going crazy and [[ParentalIncest having sex with her]].
* PetTheDog: At one point during the rather rough round up of civilians, a soldier is seen starting to carry away a little girl, only to move back and let her pick up the stuffed animal she was whimpering for.
* PleaseWakeUp: In the opening scene.
* {{Plunder}}: Several soldiers are shown stealing abandoned property and, in one scene, [[EvilArmy stripping the dead of their valuables before burning the bodies]].
* PoorCommunicationKills: A literal version of this trope; the officer originally sent to deal with the crashed plane wasn't told he's dealing with a bioweapon, so treated it as a routine clean-up job to be handled discreetly. The crisis team has to communicate through a voiceprint security system that delays communication. The media blackout means that the townspeople end up fighting the military, because they don't understand what's happening or that they shouldn't drink the water. Dr. Watts rushes out without telling the technician working with him how he found the cure.
* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: Both versions of the film showcase the military cordoning off the town and then killing first anybody trying to leave, and then ''everybody inside'', in the attempt to contain TheVirus.
* RasterVision: Used for a VideoPhone showing only [[InvisiblePresident the back of the President's head]].
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
-->'''Dr. Watts:''' It just ''astonishes'' me how shoddy this whole operation is.\\
'''Col. Peckhem:''' [[SeenItAll Nothing astonishes me anymore.]]
* RedShirtArmy: Justified; the soldiers are wearing white {{Hazmat Suit}}s that restrict their vision and makes them stand out in the woods. They're also rear echelon troops (from a chemical warfare unit) fighting Clank, a Vietnam veteran.
* ScienceIsBad: The core of an argument between Colonel Peckhem and Dr. Watts. Peckhem accuses Watts and his fellow scientists of (incorrectly) assuring the military that the Trixie virus was 100% benign; Watts counters that the actual figure was a bit less than that -- based on standards set ''by the military.''
* SoundtrackDissonance
* StepfordSmiler: One of the symptoms.
* TriggerHappy: Clank after becoming infected. Not the soldiers contrary to what some viewers think; they lose several people trying to talk armed civilians into putting down their weapons.
* VideoPhone: A video link is set up with the President of the United States so he can, if required, authorize the use of nuclear weapons to contain the virus. However, as the President spends the entire conversation [[InvisiblePresident sitting with his back to the camera]], one wonders why George Romero didn't just have him talking over a telephone speaker.
* YourHeadAsplode: Happens to a [[GasMaskMooks Gas Masked Mook]], despite being shot by the notoriously-underpowered .30 Carbine round.
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!!The 2010 version provides examples of:
* AllThereInTheManual: The motion comic showed not only that the chemical also infected animals, but also how that happened. It also showed how the pilot died and how Rory got infected - in fact, he was the first to try to raise a fuss after witnessing his pigs go berserk and saw the stuff in the water.
* AxCrazy: The three hunters in the swamp who are so gung ho for hunting that they do so in the off season. But the infection makes the ''whole town'' AxCrazy before too long. People with specific mental focus had their insanity present based on their foci.
** The hunters' AxCrazy manifests as them deciding it's open season [[spoiler:on people, infected or not]].
** A mother and son manifest theirs as a single minded desire for revenge on David [[spoiler:for killing Rory, the husband/father]].
* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Done for pretty much the entire town, but this trope can be mainly attributed with Deputy Russell. He starts out as the one that helps the Protagonist the most and even saves his life on several occasions. However as the film progresses, it becomes pretty obvious that Russell is losing his mind, becoming increasingly unstable to the point where he murders someone in an instant MoodWhiplash. Fortunately, he's able to hold it together long enough to help our main characters escape, sacrificing himself so that they can live.
* ArmiesAreEvil: Unsurprising as a staple of Romero's films.
** Played with in the 2010 remake in that the grunts [[spoiler:have been lied to -- they were told that everyone was infected regardless of appearance]], and it's ambiguous as to whether the slain civilians they find in the end are due to them becoming infected or not.
** The motion comic suggests that there was a breakdown at the evacuation zone as well, which would explain the slain civilians. Also, seeing as the military probably didn't have the manpower to go after every single infected in such a large, open town, there really was no other way to ensure quarantine after containment was broken.
* BerserkButton: Do NOT threaten David's wife. You won't live very long to see sunlight ''[[YouAreAlreadyDead ever again]]''. Least until you get a [[spoiler:knife through your throat.]]
* BoomHeadshot: How Russell executes a Government Agent who was sent in to investigate the situation.
* BrickJoke:
** The group gets a car working, and begins driving to the evac zone. Along the way, a military copter spots them on the highway and makes chase, and they pull into a car wash to lose the chopper. After a fight through the car wash after getting trapped, the car getting smashed to hell and [[spoiler:Becca's death]], they turn to go back to the car... right as the copter flies by and drops a bomb on it.
** [[spoiler:Initiate containment protocol.]]
* CannibalLarder: The hunters had commandeered a giant freezer in a truck stop and turned it into a larder full of corpses.
* CaptainObvious: People have started acting insane (sometimes homicidally so), the request for a transfer of a completely whacked out prisoner to a better facility has been ignored, an unidentified and unreported plane has crashed in the town's drinking water, and suddenly everyone has lost phone service and internet connection. Fortunately, Sheriff Obvious is there to tell people that they're in trouble. The people don't listen.
* CassandraTruth: David. He goes to the Mayor to warn that he thinks the water supply is contaminated. The Mayor refuses to give his hunch credence - however, it was more due to his concern for keeping a farming community thriving during planting season than ignoring a potential biohazard.
* CellPhonesAreUseless: The cell phone signal goes down as the virus starts to spread. At least here there is some explanation, seeing as the military likely cut off phone connection in the town.
* ChekhovsGun:
** The lighter David picks up at Quick Phil's, and the car under the tarp in his barn.
** Disappointingly subverted with the harvester. It looks like it's being set up to be one, but it's never seen again.
* ChekhovsGunman:
** The Black SUV driver, though the person inside isn't seen when we first see it.
** The three rednecks that discover the drowned pilot at the beginning of the film [[spoiler:go on a human-hunt during the outbreak, killing infectees and non-infectees alike. They even provide the final confrontation with the heroes.]]
* DamselInDistress: Any time David leaves Judy alone for more than two minutes, she ends up facing a crazy and needing rescuing. She beats the shit out of a crazy in the scene wit the no-touch car wash, though, and later in the big rig. Pretty much everyone but Russell qualifies as a '[Pronoun] in Distress' at one point or another. It's that kind of movie.
* DontMakeMeDestroyYou: Sheriff Dutten gives Rory, the first infectee, multiple warnings before finally shooting him, and is visibly devastated upon discovering the shot was fatal.
* DoubleTap: Russell finishes off two Crazies by shooting their twitching corpses, much to the horror of his companions. He attempts to justify it, that he was "just making sure" but everyone in the audience should know that this is the first clue that Russell has the 'Trixie' Virus, and will soon go nuts.
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Everyone David and Judy knew is now dead since the government [[NukeEm nuked their home town]] after [[KillEmAll indiscriminately killing EVERYONE inside]]. And when they escape to a new town? The same containment protocol will happen.]]
* DownOnTheFarm: Ogden Marsh is an agricultural community.
* DrivenToMadness: The ''entire'' town, save a few, thanks to an engineered virus in the water supply. We even get to see some of the people and how normal they were before they lost their marbles:
** The High School Principal goes from coaching baseball to impaling people with a pitch fork.
** The Coroner in the Funeral Parlor performs autopsies on deceased townsfolk, then begins mutilating people and sewing their eyes and mouths shut.
** Rory Hamill's wife and son seem to be decent people, before they went insane and decided to murder David and his wife (thankfully, they fail).
** Last but not least and probably the most notable, a group of hunters are shown hunting game in the marshes (albeit illegally) not long before they decided to begin hunting humans for sport, even converting a store room at a truck stop into a pantry to string up human corpses.
* EasterEgg: You have to watch through the credits for this - [[spoiler: Find the Truth: [[http://ogdenmarsh.com/ www.ogdenmarsh.com]]]] which leads to a blog and a twitter account for some of the residents of Ogden Marsh.
* FacingTheBulletsOneLiner: [[spoiler:Russell]] lives long enough to tell the government [[spoiler:"Fuck you for what you've done."]]
* ForTheEvulz: Subverted. It strongly appears initially that the Military is murdering and imprisoning civilians for no reason other than they're the BigBad Military, but it's later revealed that the soldiers have all been told that every civilian in the area is violently infected, whether or not they appear to be at first, and killing them is purely done in self-defense.
** Government agents likewise justify what they're doing as a means to keep any other towns or cities from getting contaminated, which is implied to have failed in the end.
* GasMaskMooks: The only human interaction between the townspeople and the soldiers comes when they grab one and pull his mask off, and when Russell charges their blockade.
* GroinAttack: With a ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill buzzsaw]].''
* HatePlague: Of a very literal kind.
* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler:When David and Judy finally make it to Cedar Rapids]], the same military satellite from the beginning [[spoiler:orders for another containment procedure to start there.]]
* HeroicSacrifice: By [[spoiler:Russell]], doubling as a case of [[spoiler:[[DyingAsYourself dying as himself]]]].
* HesDeadJim:
** Subverted. After David shoots the first townsperson to display ''the crazies'', he goes to check on his vitals.
** Played straight in many other examples, though. The [[spoiler:drowned parachuting pilot]] is examined by the ME.
** The funeral home and the medical examiners' office scenes are {{justified|Trope}} examples, as is the scene where David, Judy, Russell and Becca watch [[spoiler:Scotty and his mother]] shot down and then burned by flamethrowers.
** The scenes involving [[spoiler:truckloads of burned bodies]], the [[spoiler:hunters']] freezer full of people, etc.
* HowWeGotHere: The film begins with the town burning to the ground. It lets that image sear the retinas for a bit before it flashes away to "two days earlier:".
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: This Romero staple is also present in both the original and the remake; while the virus certainly causes insanity and violent tendencies in its hosts, it should be noted that most of those infected maintain self-awareness and personality, some retain their full intelligence, and some aren't even violent at all. The murderous acts committed by those who ''do'' turn violent seem to stem from their own deep, subconscious desires, such as for revenge, or for an "entertaining" hunt, or to slice up on living bodies. As such, it can be argued that Trixie doesn't ''make'' the townsfolk murderers, it just ''brings out'' their violent intentions.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: The government agent in the SUV says that their measures are to stop an even bigger spread -- "What would you rather have, a global pandemic?" The horrible irony is that, given how ambiguous the ending is, it might well wind up like that anyway.
* TheImmune: [[spoiler:David, Judy, and possibly her unborn child are all immune to the virus.]]
* ImpaledPalm: The town sheriff gets a boning knife through his palm. Later in the same scene, he grabs a Crazy woman by the throat with the same hand, sending the knife into a major blood vessel.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: The people who get pitchforked while strapped to hospital beds and completely unable to escape. At least they're crazy.
* ImprobableWeaponUser:
** Not only are the crazies able to use weapons, but they're creative enough to turn a [[spoiler:car wash]] into a deathtrap.
** There's the knife that was [[spoiler:stabbed through David's hand]].
* InfantImmortality: Averted. [[spoiler:Bill burns his wife and son alive]], and all of the townsfolk, save for the four survivors, are killed by the army and their bodies burned.
* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: [[spoiler:A nuclear weapon is employed to stop the spread of the infection beyond Ogden Marsh.]]
* JumpScare: Many. Mostly characters getting grabbed or eyes or faces suddenly appearing.
** Even the goddamn DVD Menu has one, involving a photoshop of a little girl in a gas mask suddenly lurching at the audience in time to the music. While not much of a jump scare, it's still quite scary/creepy to those who aren't expecting it.
* KillTheCutie: [[spoiler:Becca, when one of the crazies hangs her at the car wash.]]
* KillItWithFire: The second infected man [[spoiler:does this to his wife and son]]. And the military does it to [[spoiler:the whole town from more than one angle]]!
* KubrickStare: The crazies sport this. It's even lampshaded by one of the police officers when he compares the second infected person to the first one (Bill to Rory).
* MouthStitchedShut: Eyes too in the medical examiner's office.
* MyCarHatesMe: The carwash scene.
* NewscasterCameo: The newscaster in the credits is Bruce Aune, a real [=KCRG-TV9=] anchor.
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: The film takes place in the fictional town of Ogden Marsh in the also fictitious Pierce County, Iowa. [[spoiler: Cedar Rapids, the city David and Judy escape to at the end of the film, is real however]].
* NoFEMAResponse: The remake has the first city cordoned off and Fuel Air Bombed. Worse, they make everybody think they're evacuating, when they're really just herding them into trucks to execute them with machine guns and burn the bodies. Survivors make it to another city which is then targeted for the same treatment.
** The latter could possibly be an aversion. There was evidence outside civilian help had been brought in (civilian ambulances at the evacuation point) and the motion comic strongly suggests there was a breakdown of order at the evacuation point after the containment area was breached.
* NotUsingTheZWord:
** Given that the infected remain intelligent, and in a few cases extremely creative, this might be justified.
** They also do not eat flesh. And, unless David was infected from the beginning (He did happen to get through the military's inspection) the "virus" does not appear to be a virus at all since he didn't become infected after having infected blood in an open wound. It sounds more like a chemical weapon than biological.
** Averted in the [[AllThereInTheManual motion comics]] where the later infected very obviously bite people and one of the hunters starts eating a soldier.
* NukeEm
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: See NotUsingTheZWord. While the insanity virus sounds similar to that of ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'''s rage-filled zombies, the victims of this virus retain both their intelligence and their personality - usually.
* [[OutrunTheFireball Outdrive the Fireball]]: [[spoiler:Subverted. The nuke still overtakes them and blasts the truck off course, but they survive with minor injuries.]]
* PacManFever: The second motion comic has random bleep-bloop sounds coming from Nicholas' Nintendo DS. When his DS is shown later falling to the ground, a generic pixilated landscape is shown.
* ParachuteInATree: The skeletal remains of a long-dead parachuter are found entangled in a tree.
* PaterFamilicide: Bill does this to his wife and son, but instead of killing himself or blaming someone else, both of which is what a typical family killer would do, he goes on with his life until he gets arrested.
* ThePlague: The payload of the plane that went down and contaminated the water.
* PunnyName: Quick Phil's gas station/diner.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sheriff David Dutten
** Also, Deputy Russell Clank, [[spoiler: that is before he becomes infected]].
* RecoveredAddict: Rory is known as the village drunk, even though he had stopped drinking two years before the events of the film. When he walks with a gun to the baseball field in the middle of a game and does not seem to understand what is happening around him, the sheriff believes he started drinking again. When Rory dies, however, the tests show that he had no alcohol in his blood.
* SceneryGorn: Right after [[spoiler: the big explosion]].
* SceneryPorn: There are many landscape shots showcasing fields and farms throughout the film. Some are even taken at sunrise or sunset.
* SequelHook: [[spoiler: David, Judy and their unborn child make it to Cedar Rapids. Then the military satellite from the beginning orders to "Initiate containment protocol." In addition, a news broadcast is interrupted by at least one of the crazies in the credits.]]
* ShoutOut:
** While other characters and the ending credits only refer to him by his first name, Russell at one point mentions his surname is Clank, a reference to the character from the original he's based on.
** When Russell stops the government SUV, he says to the driver, "Welcome to Pierce County, the friendliest place on Earth, asshole." This is a reference to a sign which appears in one of the posters – or the other way around.
* SinisterScrapingSound[=/=]SwordDrag: [[spoiler:The school principal]] with his pitchfork as well as [[spoiler:the hunters at the truck stop with his knife]].
* SoundtrackDissonance: The happy "Bring Me Sunshine" by Willie Nelson is played during the credits, even though the disease is still spreading.
* SparedByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Judy.]]
* SurpriseVehicle: Despite being surrounded by flat terrain with no buildings, they don't notice there's a helicopter gunship searching for them until it's almost overhead. The 'copter doesn't seem to notice them, either.
* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The infected also remain alive.
* ThousandYardStare: The infected sometimes have this when they're non-violent.
* ZombieApocalypse
* ZombieInfectee: [[spoiler:Russell.]] He recognizes this, and delivers a HeroicSacrifice to distract the military to give the protagonists a chance to get past the quarantine.

* RasterVision: Used for a VideoPhone showing only [[InvisiblePresident the back of the President's head]]. [[note]]Had the president turned around, the viewers would have seen it was director George Romero.[[/note]]

* InvisiblePresident: Only the back of the President's head is seen, made all the stranger by having him only appear on a VideoPhone screen. [[note]]Had the president turned around, the viewers would have seen it was director George Romero.[[/note]]

A 1973 horror movie by George A. Romero (of ''Film/LivingDeadSeries'' fame). A small town in Pennsylvania suffers from a string of violent attacks, ranging from beatdowns to arson. Firefighter David and his pregnant wife Judy are thrust into all this and to top it off, the military quarantine the town with orders to shoot anybody that escapes, regardless of being infected or not. David and Judy must try their damnedest to escape before the infected or the military get them.

* GenreSavvy:
** David spent a little less than a day before he figures out that something's wrong and tries to take measures to stop it.
** He turned off the water supply - even though the Mayor told him not to - because it was infecting people.
** He and his deputy ''immediately'' realize that they are being purposefully quarantined when the phone lines and all internet/mobile signals go dead.
** The deputy making sure to [[spoiler:put some rounds in the bodies of Rory's wife and son after they've been killed. 'Just making sure'.]]

* InvisiblePresident: Only the back of the President's head is seen, made all the stranger by having him only appear on a VideoPhone screen.