The Craziest

Seeing The Crazies as just an action criticism of the military is a bit blind. The film was made at a time when American society was undergoing a series of multifaceted problems and disillusioning events, and it reflects, first and foremost, a general atmosphere of fear and a sense of powerlessness. The film is subordinated through and through to the central motif of madness as the loss of experienced certainties and ideals. On the level of the story, absolutely all the characters are affected by it in some way, belonging to three key groups - the ordinary citizens, the soldiers and the command, headed by the President. Each group is threatened by the other two, leading to an all-pervasive paranoia. As a result, The Crazies is a chillingly complex metaphor for American society after the Vietnam War, or rather after the end of its "Vietnamization" phase. Even on an individual level, the various forms of madness that no one escapes are revealed, from the infected civilians to the deterringly uninformed naivety of the soldiers or the fanaticism of the army scientist to the aspiring colonel who is sent into the contaminated area and then withdrawn again without being able to do anything.