When it's a "Zombie" Virus, it's The Crazies

A few days ago, someone pointed out that the History Channel was doing a special on zombies. More accurately, it was on the history of zombies in movies, because really, you don't have much material if you try to focus on actual history. Guess they get bored around Halloween. Anyway though, where I came in, they were talking about how technically speaking, Night of the Living Dead wasn't the first zombie movie, at least if you define "zombie movie" as "a movie which contains at least one thing that could be called a zombie." The other movies in question though A- totally suck, and B- don't really count, as they're all just old B-movies whose only zombie related content is a villain who has some of your Haitian Voodoo Mind Control Powder Farmer type zombies working a plantation, without them really doing anything of note.

Then tonight, Turner Classic Movies actually went and aired all these in a big long marathon of MST3k fodder. Not even good MST3k fodder. I had it on in the background while I did other stuff. After this, there was Night of the Living Dead, for the sake of comparison, and then finally The Crazies.

The Crazies is a movie I had never seen before tonight, but was aware of, and like to bring up whenever I'm trying to explain to people how movies like, say, 28 Days Later A- aren't zombie movies, B- aren't an original take on any concept, and C- are just meritless piles of garbage when you aren't suffering from those misconceptions (you'd think the fact that the creators of 28 Days later gave it something like 5 alternate endings, all of which suck and contradict the whole movie by their own admission would be enough). Anyway, now that I've actually SEEN The Crazies, it works even better for that.

There are a whole bunch of movies, mostly recent, that claim to be zombie movies, but then go "In MY movie, zombies are caused by a virus, so you still eat people, but you aren't rotting, so you're totally fast! That's way scarier!" I have little to no respect for this notion for a wide variety of reasons, which normally I wouldn't list off like this, but it's relevant to the rest of this. So, in no particular order... Who told you zombies were supposed to be scary monsters? They're more of an environmental hazard that's at the same time a mild threat, source of amusement, and depressing thing to contemplate. Fast cunning zombies are actually way less intimidating, because they're less horrible of a thing to end up turning into. Look at vampires for example. I'm not at all scared of a vampire biting me and turning me into a vampire, because honestly, the pros outweigh the cons. I'd trade being able to go outside during the day for practical immortality and a variety of superpowers any day. I'm already nocturnal. The blood bit doesn't bother me either, ever eat a french dip? The garlic thing would be annoying, but still, well worth the trade. Meanwhile, nobody in their right mind wants to be a zombie. You're incredibly slow, too stupid to even work a doorknob, and rednecks are prone to blow your head off for fun. There isn't a single positive to balance it out either. That's why you don't want to be one.

Then there's the whole virus angle. First off, you can cure a virus. If it's affecting enough people, you're going to find someone with a natural immunity, if it's man made (as tends to always be the case with this premise), you have a ton of information on it from day one, and even barring either of those working out, there's antibiotics, researchers outside the infection zone, etc. All that's assuming you even have a massive outbreak in the first place. When you're going out of your way to say your monster-fying virus can only be contracted by getting bit by someone who has it (or getting splashed with a bunch of their blood, etc.) that's not going to spread like wildfire. The movie zombie virus, basically, is an STD, and those are only wide-spread because they have such long incubation periods people spread them all over before they realize they're a carrier. Movie zombie virus has an incubation period of what? 5 seconds to a day? There is no way that would ever spread to more than a couple dozen people tops before being contained, even less if we're also making the assumption (and we always are) that people are just gunning down people who are even potentially infected on sight.

The Crazies could be considered a response to these stupid movies, taking their flawed premise and actually handling it in a realistic fashion. Except of course that it was, you know, made roughly 30 years before them. Also, rather than bending over backwards to try and be a zombie movie, this is the movie George Romero did between Night and Dawn, so the natural inclination would be to do just the opposite.

OK, enough with the long rambling preamble. Here's the plot. A plane carrying a sample of a decidely nasty virus called Trixie of all things (resulting from a biological weapons think tank of course), crashes in well, that same small town outside Pittsburgh all of George Romero's movies feature, contaminating the water supply. The rest of the movie covers the resulting outbreak from every possible angle. The researchers working on a cure, the soldiers trying to keep things properly quarantined, the higher ups trying to work out contingency plans (and cover stories), general shots of carnage in the streets, and periodic check-ins with various groups of citizens who on the emotion side of things, you're rooting for, as they're the most sympathetic characters in the movie, but on rational side, you want to see them gunned down before they make it out of town, as it's established that they're carriers. It has an overall vibe closer to a documentary than a horror movie.

Then we have the virus itself. It's highly contagious, it has an incubation period of roughly 10 days before you show signs of infection (the government response is rather slow because they initially believe it to be a benign strain for what it's worth), eventually fatal in most cases, and then of course we have the primary symptom of, well, going crazy. Crazy here doesn't mean the cheap cop-out of turning into a people-eating wild man though, as found in the movies I was bashing earlier, but rather a more realistic take on just plain being psychotic delusional nutjobs who very much prone to harming themselves and others. The specifics, by and large, are honestly a heck of a lot more disturbing than just plain killing and/or eating people would be, especially with the brief moments of lucidity here and there.

At no point does the movie really play around with the concept that it's an incurable condition, that it'll spread to the whole world, or that all carriers must be killed on sight (just the ones who pose kill-or-be-killed threats), and we don't even have the standard character of the lone uninfected person (or small group) trying to make it out alive. Or rather, we do, but as mentioned above, they ARE infected, which seriously changes their role. The entire driving force is just the depiction of how cold-heartedly brutal the government's response to a scenario like this has to be to keep the casualties to a minimum. In other words, it's what The Andromeda Strain might have lead into if the author had the stomach not to go for such a cheesy, cop-out, flawed ending (wow, I'm bashing everyone tonight).

All that said, not a movie I'd particularly recommend to anyone (unless they called 28 Days Later and kin realistic and needed the slap in the face). The reason it did terribly when it was first released wasn't that it wasn't a very well done movie, it's that it's a profoundly morbid and depressing movie, where you know going in that even the happiest possible ending is still going to be a massive downer. Also, the title's a bad fit. Rereleasing later under the title Code Name: Trixie is pretty bad too.

Interesting side note 1- While looking up that alternate title, I learned there's a remake in the works due, out in 2008. I wouldn't recommend that either. If they do a bad job, it'll suck, and if they do a good job, morbid as all heck.

Interesting side note 2- The head researcher is played by the same John Rhyes-Davies-esque guy as the rationality preaching scientist in Dawn of the Dead... with largely the same personality. I'd suggest he's even the same freakin' character if I could cram both into the same continuity somehow.