The Crazies Return

 Famed director, George Romero's cult classic, The Crazies, has been remade, and leaving many fans anxious for the new motion picture.

George Romero first became a household name in 1968, and a local favorite with his first film, Night of the Living Dead, which was filmed in Evans City, PA.

After the huge success of the zombie movie, in 1973, Romero decided to make the Evans City area the home of his new project, The Crazies, starring: Will MacMillan, Lane Carroll, and Harold Wayne Jones.

While the town welcomed Romero back with open arms, the movie's content was soon the subject of heightened debate.

The movie follows the four main characters: David (MacMillan), his fiancé Judy (Carroll), and their friend Clank (Jones), as they battle for their freedom as their town is invaded by not only a manmade plague, but by the government who will stop at nothing to contain and exterminate the plague, Trixie.

Not only does the movie have a theme parallel to events in the Vietnam War, but also made people cringe with an incest scene between a father and daughter.

Whether it was the low budget quality of the film, or some of the more debatable scenes, the movie failed to move audiences as Romero's previous film had done.

According to a recent pole on Facebook, over 60,000 people have attended a special screening of The Crazies, and received praises from the fans.

Following town sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant) and his wife Judy (Mitchell), and two other unaffected townspeople, as they fight to survive, as a toxin begins to turn residents of Ogden Marsh, Iowa into violent psychopaths.

While taking the basic storyline of the original screenplay, Director Breck Eisner, has twisted and developed a whole new look into what actually goes on in The Crazies.

"Any time you do a remake or a re-imagining, you want to have target aspects of the movie that they didn't have access to when they first made it.

There is no military point-of-view. The original script by Scott Kozar was mostly military and it was more of an action movie. When I came on the movie, my first thought was I wanted to get rid of the point of view of the military," says Eisner.

Not only does Eisner give the movie a new vision and point of view, but also offers a look into how the contamination affects the minds and the physical appearance of the townspeople.

"There are five stages of the Crazies. The first is before anything happens; the fifth is when you're dead. The second stage is a performance-based craziness, which is somebody you know acting differently but not looking differently at all. The next two stages are various levels of physical differences. I wanted to go far enough that there is an iconic quality to it. You'll see, when they're at the very latest stages of the disease, it's pretty pronounced," states Eisner.

With a new cast including: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, and Danielle Panabaker, and with the help of original creator and director, George Ramero as the executive producer, The Crazies remake is showing a promising outcome among fans and critics.

"We don't have a father raping his daughter in this one. That one point was just a bit much for us. It's not an in-your-face movie. It's horrific and graphic, but I wanted a real quality to it. To me the people should feel real and when there's death, we're not shying away from blood when it's appropriate, but it's not a blood bath by any stretch of the imagination. It's visceral and horrific. It's definitely a re-imagining from the original, and an update from the times," says Eisner.

The Crazies hits theatres February 26, 2010 from Overture Films.

(Breck Eisner interview courtesy of Bloody-Disgusting.com)