Quick Cuts

By J.C.

FEAR is THE KEY. In the prologue to this foolish thriller, Barry Newman loses his wife, his child and his closest friend. During the first minutes of the film proper, he shoots up some cops and abducts Suzy Kendall, who just happens to be sitting around a Louisiana courtroom, a stroke of luck about as likely as finding Jean Shrimpton whittling in front of some general store. Stealing a convenient Gran Torino, he then sets off over back roads and along the edges of levees, pursuing a band of international heavies while at the same time being pursued by the state police, who mistake him, understandably, for a menace to society. "I hate you so much it hurts," Suzy spits at Newman, struggling to summon an expression of pain to her ravishing countenance. Newman, looking carefully scruffy, like a Steiff animal mangled in the manufacturing, survives this as well as other abuse. The denouement finds him locked in deadly psychological combat with the bad guys in a bathysphere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Although Newman eventually sweats out crucial information from the suffocating villains, the ending might still be called unhappy: he resurfaces.

THE CRAZIES is the latest effort of George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead. That ghoulish little saga of resurrected flesh-eaters stalking western Pennsylvania has been horrifying eager audiences at midnight shows for two years now; it even received a special screening at the Museum of Modern Art. Romero operates out of Pittsburgh, making his films on the cheap. Rather like Skinflick Impresario Russ Meyer, Romero edits his scenes into short blurts, which gives them a certain spurious energy. His scripts, which hover dangerously close to illiteracy, contain outrageously pedestrian dialogue, mostly shouted. ("Get Dr. Brookmyre a gas mask!") The plot of The Crazies is a graft off The Andromeda Strain, wherein a virus that the Government has perfected for germ warfare somehow escapes and drives the citizens of Evans City, Pa., out of their gourds. The performances, mostly by amateurs, with a sprinkling of peripheral professionals, suggest that Pittsburgh is no hotbed of undiscovered talent. . J.C.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.