The Crazies

Year: 1973

Country: USA

Tagline: All hell is about to break loose.  »

Plot: Note: this film has two basic subplots, one of which follows the efforts of civilians to stay alive during the disaster. The other involves the efforts of political and military leaders to contain the epidemic of violent insanity induced by the weapon.Set in and around the small town of Evans City, Pennsylvania, the central characters are fireman David (W.G. McMillan), his nurse girlfriend Judy (Lane Caroll) and fireman Clank (Harold Wayne Jones), who harbors feelings for Judy. (It is established that David was a Green Beret and Clank an infantryman, who both served in Vietnam). The town has been subject to strange events of late, including an arson fire at a local farm committed by a demented farmer. Judy and David have extra cause for concern, since Judy is pregnant with David's child.Meanwhile, heavily armed U.S. troops clad in white NBC suits with gas masks, arrive in Evans City, led by Major Ryder, who takes over the doctor's office where Judy works. It is revealed that an army plane carrying an untested bio-weapon recently crash-landed in the hills near the town, infecting the water supply with a top-secret virus code-named 'Trixie', causing victims to either die or become homicidal. In Washington D.C., government officials order Colonel Peckam (Lloyd Hollar) to go to Evans City to help contain the virus, while a government scientist, Dr. Watts (Richard France), arrives in town to find a cure before the virus is able to spread outside the quarantine perimeter.Washington authorities decide to maintain airborne bombers armed with nuclear weapons to destroy the infected town, if necessary. Further mayhem ensues when the army cordons off the town, shooting anyone attempting escape. The soldiers are assigned to quarantine the townspeople in the local high school, and the ensuing chaos results in the local sheriff being shot with his own pistol. While the townspeople are being rousted from their homes, a soldier encounters a serene-looking elderly woman. Dropping his guard, he urges the woman to come with him, and she fatally stabs him with her knitting needles.Later in the movie, a small group of soldiers are killed by several locals armed with firearms and dynamite, after which an infected woman broom-sweeps the bloodied grass. The local priest, aghast at soldiers rousting his flock, douses himself with a keg of gasoline, and immolates himself (a reference to Buddhist priests who immolated themselves in protest during the Vietnam War).The remainder of the film focuses upon the travails of David, Judy, Clank, teenager Kathie (Lynn Lowry) and her father Artie (Richard Liberty), after soldiers confine them in a large van. The five people manage to escape, with intentions of leaving town.David, Clank, Judy, Kathie and Artie travel off the roads, hounded by soldiers, as well as a crop-duster helicopter comandeered by the soldiers, which David and Clank fire upon it, forcing it to crash. After a spending a night in a vacant house, they gather up food and supplies (not realizing that the water from the fausets is tainted with the virus), and head on out again. That afternoon, they come upon a small squad of soldiers occuping another vacant house. Waiting until dark, David and Clank sneak upon the soldiers, killing the sentries outside and hold at gunpoint three soldiers inside the house. Roughly interogating one of them, the soldier tells David and Clank about the quarantine and that the virus, which is making people go crazy, is in the water system for the entire area. But when one soldier attempts to go for his gun, Clank is forced to shoot him, as well as the other two soldiers who try to escape. While Clank watches over Kathie and Artie, whom are by this point becoming infected, David stays in an upstairs bedroom with Judy where they talk about the virus and that David must have some kind of immunity since he is not showing any symptoms.The next morning, gradually becoming mad from the virus, Artie eventually rapes his increasingly deranged daughter Kathie. Upon discovering the pair, Clank retaliates by beating Artie, who then apparently hangs himself. A visibly shaken Kathie wanders outside, only to be killed by trigger-happy soldiers. While David and Judy flee, Clank runs into the nearby woods where he (also clearly infected as well) kills several soldiers in defense before being shot in the head.That evening, David and Judy hide out in an abandoned textile facility near the perimeter for the quarantine zone. But by this time, Judy has now become visibly infected because of her erractic behavior. David tries to hide Judy from the soldiers as a patrol comes through the area. David kills another soldier, puts on his white biowarfare suite, and attempts to impersonate the soldier to help Judy escape. But in a tragic twist of fate, Judy is killed in a crossfire between soldiers and another group of deranged townspeople (nicknamed 'crazies' by the soldiers). Angry and frightened, David surrenders to the military. He knows that he is immune to the virus, but spitefully keeps it a secret.Meanwhile, the soldiers isolate Dr. Watts in the middle of a disaster area with primitive facilities. Watts' rightful insistence that he might find a cure in a proper laboratory are overridden with threats of brute force. When the doctor finally develops a possible cure, he is mistaken for one of the infected whilst attempting delivery of the vaccine and forced into a quarantined area by soldiers. The test tubes containing the vaccine are then shattered after the doctor falls to his death when pushed down a flight of stairs by a stampede of 'crazies'.The final scene shows a disconcerted Colonel Peckam being ordered to relocate to another infected city. He boards a helicopter, leaving behind a town in chaos with no end in sight.A nurse and her husband try to get out of their infected town full of viruses that find their way into the town's drinking water, turning everyone who is exposed to it into a murderous lunatic. But the Army has it sealed off. 

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