Gary K’s review published on Letterboxd:
Film 29/39 - 3/3 Disease Films
Another early George Romero jam that I hadn’t seen. I remember watching the super slick zombie-esque remake around the time it came out and being entertained. This was an entirely different animal, Uber low budget, non actors and an almost documentary feel for most of the runtime.
A pre-credit sequence sets the tone with a husband going crazy having killed his wife and threatening his children. From there we skip any kind of set up and jump right to the arrival of the military attempting to contain a virus outbreak emanating from an experimental vaccine that was being transported in bulk by plane and crashed near the town. Exposition on the run for the next 100 minutes.
I have to confess to being relatively bored for much of the runtime as the contours of the story were clear from the get go. It felt tonally like a direct follow up to NOTLD without the dread or artistry. A few scenes of the military looting the belongings of the townsfolk tipped Romero’s hand a bit more explicitly to how he felt, but living in a pandemic now I had some sympathy to the need to quarantine such a deadly and virulent outbreak. At the same time, my anti authoritarian streak identified with the townsfolk.
The military was portrayed as bumbling, infective and anti-science all at once. As the film shambled to its conclusion, scene after scene demonstrated the futility and inevitability of our self-destruction. And then I watched the first Presidential debate and felt much the same...
