Horror remakes are almost as much of a staple of the genre as sequels so it was no real surprise that studios started mining lower budget films made by iconic directors with the chance to do it all over again — this time with more money. 

Paramount Pictures took that exact step after optioning a remake of the 1973 film called “The Crazies” by director George A. Romero. Scott Kosar, who had previously worked on the remakes of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Amityville Horror” was hired to write the script. Unfortunately, creative differences with original director Brad Anderson led to the project being shelved. It wasn’t until four years later that the film was revived under a new studio with Breck Eisner hired to direct along with a new script that was vastly different than the previous version. 

While the main plot remained about a military grade biological weapon that accidentally gets dropped in a small town that transforms the people into homicidal psychopaths, Eisner had a different take that he would only focus on the victims rather than spend half the film dealing with the military like in Romero’s original work as well as the first script for the remake. 

According to Eisner, he wanted to see this atrocity being carried out through the eyes of a few main characters from the town where tragedy strikes, which elevated the stakes and made this a much more horrific film….

In the latest episode of Rewind of the Living Dead, we’re going to turn off the tap water and hope we can escape town limits as we review the 2010 film “The Crazies”… 

Music courtesy of Andrew Scott Bell 

Music courtesy of Andrew Scott Bell and Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

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