As I had to go into town anyway this afternoon to pay in a cheque, I decided to have a browse in HMV.  I came out with a nifty DVD of The Crazies, which has the 1973 original on a second disc.

Watched the film tonight and really enjoyed it.  I suspected that I would because George A Romero was involved in the writing and production.  Unsurprisingly, the film has a fair amount of gore and bloody violence in it.

At the end, Jayne said that it was like a cross between Outbreak, 28 Days Later and Resident Evil which I can’t disagree with, although all those films owe a debt to the 1973 original and Romero’s zombie films so the similarity was, perhaps, unavoidable.

Unlike most of Romero’s films this is not about Zombies, but it might as well be.  The crazies of the title are not the dead mysteriously walking around, but people who have been infected by some biological warfare virus but the process has the same result: de-humanising them so the filmmakers can let loose the full range of special effects on them.   The difference here is that instead of barely sentient creatures motivated only by the need to feed you have people still able to talk, think and operate machinery and weapons – they are just seriously deranged and want to kill.

The defining aspect of the film is the absolute pragmatism and ruthlessness of the military efforts to contain the outbreak.  It is one of those strange facts of life that Americans can simultaneously believe they live in the ultimate democracy and ‘land of the free’ while believing that the government is capable of of such acts.

I have not yet watched the original film – Jayne wanted to watch the new one first.  Left to my own devices I would have done it the other way round, but she’s the boss.  I’ll save that for a rainy day.  At the moment most of our DVDs are packed away, with only a handful still accessible, so I am rationing those.