Editorials
How ‘The Crazies’ Reinterprets a Romero Classic for a New Generation [Revenge of the Remakes]
There’s a solid chance this month’s edition of “Revenge of the Remakes” ends up as one of my favorite column entries. George A. Romero’s The Crazies and Breck Eisner’s The Crazies inspire an exceptional case study about the peaceful coexistence between remakes and originals. Both filmmakers choose unique perspectives when dooming small-town America, even though the early 1970s and dawning 2010s validate eerily similar conspiracy paranoias. Stacking these Trixie-toxin thrillers back-to-back validates why remakes aren’t here to piss all over your safe, swaddling nostalgia blankets. Remakes aren’t the enemy — they’re a golden opportunity.
Romero’s The Crazies could only accomplish so much as a commentary against bureaucratic incompetence given the $270K budget. It benefits from a facelift, much like how Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes reaches its full potential as a bloodthirsty 2000s revamp. That’s not a shot at legends who’ve immortalized their contributions to horror cinema — Craven and Romero are responsible for entire volumes in the unwritten horror bible. Instead, it’s an argument starter that begs to evaluate contemporary remakes on their merits against source titles that might be rougher around the edges than legacy blinders allow us to admit.
The Approach
‘The Crazies’ (1973)
The tonal separation between Romero’s and Eisner’s visions speaks to each era’s political and militaristic anxieties (Vietnam War vs. Iraq and Afghanistan deployments). They’re both disgusted by America’s valuation of middle to lower-class citizens, but drastically varied in their execution. Much like The Stuff, The Blob, or The Return of the Living Dead, Romero fixates on American military officials and Washington hotshots as a focal satire. Eisner unleashes a rage virus a la 28 Days Later or The Sadness that consumes innocent townsfolk as the camera captures their struggles, less interested in the dumbfuckery colonels and biochemical engineers get themselves into. There’s a knife-to-throat bleakness about the remake that doesn’t exist in Romero’s exploitation portrayal of what could be going on behind closed doors — Eisner channels the irrationality of nearly four additional decades worth of documented corruption and bypasses what we already assume.
Iowa’s Ogden Marsh plays backdrop in 2010’s The Crazies (penned by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright). Timothy Olyphant stars as a respectable sheriff in David Dutton, one of the first to witness a troubling outbreak that turns townsfolk into violent berzerkers. David, his doctor-wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson), and Judy’s assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker) band together when enforced quarantines go awry. It’s clear that something has infected Ogden Marsh, and American officials can’t risk its spread, lest the entire world turns into bloodthirsty killing machines like the Marshian mutants.
Beck doesn’t mess with ferocious tonal shifts made famous by 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. Major horror releases of the 2000s and earlier 2010s all followed a template where moods sank, colors dulled, and grittiness cast a dark shadow. Call it “The Platinum Dunes” effect, blame post-9/11 rewiring, and point at the rise in popularity of Zack Snyder’s muted style — these all shaped the greater horror landscape. Movies had to compete with a world that wasn’t hiding its terrible and terrifying realities, leading movies like The Crazies to hold nothing back. Not to say Romero pulls punches, but the flip in perspective from inside the government to outside as bystanders says everything about how society was feeling during the era of each film’s release.
Does It Work?
‘The Crazies’ (2010)
Eisner nails the ruthless aesthetic of making a socio-political survival thriller in 2000s horror terms. There’s an unctuous malaise to 2010’s The Crazies that submerges audiences in a rural American nightmare. From start to finish, a sense of hopelessness keeps us on edge as David’s group marches towards their inevitable fates. Romero does well to represent the government as manipulative, incompetent fools who poison the country they’re meant to protect, which Eisner doesn’t need to do as heavily this time. Plenty happens between 1973 and 2010 that makes Romero’s assertions less and less fantastical, which lets Eisner lean into the utter inhumanity Ogen Marsh’s population endures as tax-paying collateral damage.
Intensity jumps a few notches by treating The Crazies like 28 Days Later or other “Rage Virus” films. Eisner produces an infinitely scarier version of The Crazies on a purely visual level. Ogden Marsh’s “crazy” residents almost look zombified as they skewer, roast, and commit heinous acts of violence against their neighbors, fitting the 2000s need one-up what’s shown during weekday news segments. Eisner is going for the full-on horror experience, from righteous jump scares in sudsy car washes to gnarly killing blows in mechanic bays, if only to emphasize what Romero established years prior. He’s able to retain the anger in Romero’s themes while adding post-millennium angst and pulse-pounding tension, staying true to the original’s conspiratorial themes with a deeper bite.
The entire cast of 2010’s The Crazies does a tremendous job selling the transformation of Ogden Marsh into a dystopian outbreak site. We’re talking beyond Olyphant as the gun-slinging hero or Anderson as the slow to show infection replacement for Harold Wayne Jones’ Vietnam War veteran Clank. Actors like Brett Rickaby as arsonist Bill Franum or Larry Cedar as the wielder of the infamous pitchfork on the remake’s poster do a tremendous job displaying the virus’ stranglehold. Romero shows his infected losing their moral blockers as fathers become incest-hungry monsters or ex-military men become trigger-happy soldiers off the battlefield, whereas Eisner goes the murderous mayhem route almost instantaneously. It’s a straightforward and scarier breed of sicko foe.
The Result
‘The Crazies’ (2010)
Eisner and his writers pay immense respect to Romero’s original but aren’t afraid to deviate from existing blueprints. Significant events are still relevant, from Russell’s slow realization that he’s becoming the enemy to a hanging that’s ten times more harrowing this time around. The Crazies (1973) is built around what happens when the early stages of pandemic containment spiral out of control, with heavy doses of authoritative cynicism that Eisner doesn’t strive to copycat. The redo’s script cracks a haunting new way to interpret those fears after a few more decades of recorded and reported government misdeeds without muffling less than subtle people-versus-state messages.
The most notable creative difference sees no character in the ballpark of Richard France’s scientist, Dr. Watts, who spends the majority of Romero’s film testing an antidote that could save humanity. Eisner doesn’t care about what’s happening in laboratories or makeshift command centers because what’s truly horrific isn’t found in beakers or under microscope magnification. Where Romero’s film is more about commanding bodies failing on a spectacular scale, Eisner emphasizes the avoidable consequences we the people endure. Romero wants you to see the parties responsible, whereas Eisner wants your skin to crawl when watching innocents morph into bloodthirsty lunatics. If anything, Romero gets lost in Dr. Watts’ mission and cleanup objectives while Eisner successfully hinges his film on rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth aspects the original glosses over.
The Crazies matches Romero’s blunt social awareness by refusing to tiptoe around intentions but does elevate action and violence on gorier terms. It becomes a more standardized horror experience, easily accessible to masses who want to squirm in their theater seats on a Friday night. Eisner orchestrates senseless bloodshed that sticks with you long after the evidence has been nuked into dust, taking the Horror 101 route to assert points versus something like the asinine red tape that inevitably prevents Dr. Watts from saving the day. The remake is no dumber or a less thoughtful commentary on classified weapons experiments and the global threat they pose — Eisner plays in a different sandbox with new toys. His The Crazies makes the most of 2000s du jor horror trends, never feeling like a fad film that’s preying upon nostalgia or mimicry to strike relevance.
The Lesson
It’s a shame that governmental satires remain relevant with cyclical predictability. The Crazies as a concept is as relatable today as it was in 2010 or 1973. Eisner understands that Romero’s foundation doesn’t have to be altered, only the presentation. Proper remakes reinvent; they don’t rehash. Watching Romero’s and Eisner’s versions of The Crazies paints a complete red, white, and bruised picture of how the government works for itself, not the American people. That’s because they’re two halves of a conversation about broken systems, neither movie stepping on the other’s lines when telling their stories.
So what did we learn?
● If George A. Romero is alright with signing off on remakes of his films, then we should be too.
● Timothy Olyphant is due for a return to the horror genre.
● Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but reinterpretation is more fulfilling.
● If I hear another person try to tell me 2000s horror remakes were worthless, so help me Paimon…
Confession time! I saw The Crazies (2010) way before I ever saw Romero’s The Crazies (1973). I was a Hofstra University junior still fresher into my horror journey, checking out the latest scary fare in theaters that weekend. Did that sour my appreciation of Romero’s original when I finally started exploring horror’s bottomless vault of past releases? Not a lick.
Remakes aren’t an assault on existing culture — they’re a contemporary gateway into horror’s rich history. The best remakes will spark curiosity in younger audiences to seek out those movies that came first, not instigate a nostalgia flame war that wants to erase titles from relevance. If you want proof, here I am.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
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