Research Into Similar Products - 1970s

The Crazies – 1973

Director: George A Romero

Genre: Horror

 Cover:   See Right
Certificate: 18

This establishing shot of this movie starts with a 5 second extreme long shot, showing a stereotypical farm house. It is in a field all alone, surrounded by countryside and grass. The dirt road at the foreground of the shot looks unused, which furthers the impression of the house being completely alone. It makes the house seem distant from the rest of the world. This tells the audience that maybe the people in this farmhouse are very private or secretive, creating mystery about them already. There is diagetic sound in the background of general nature, but it is all very still and quiet, giving a deserted feel.

The film then jump cuts to a shot of a cuddly toy sheep being placed down, which then becomes part of a match-on-action sequence of a young girl getting ready for bed. The camera angles are all from about waist height, showing things in a point-of-view (POV) shot of the little girl. The noise is again diagetic, setting the scene as completely normal and usual. A cuckoo clock can be heard chiming nine times, telling the audience the time, connoting that it is too late for a young girl to be awake anyway. It is likely that she has woken in the night, as the audience sees her getting a drink of water.
The clock chime is followed by a creepy, childlike giggle. The camera jump cuts to a close-up of the girl, which shows her scared expression. There is continuity editing with match-on-action to show the boy playing his prank, with jump cuts to the girl’s face again showing her reaction to these things. The girl is represented stereotypically as easily scared or naive and innocent, showing the male dominance in the film. The tension or suspense is lessened, as the audience can see why the ‘spooky’ happenings are occurring, and though the girl is calling out, it is not seen as too scary. 

When the boy ventures to the basement and is scaring the girl, the midshot shows the shadow creeping behind the girl on the wall. This gives the audience a new reason to be apprehensive, as the camera then jump cuts to a shot of the boy’s face, changing from amusement to fear, connoting that this new shadow was not planned by him.
This shadow is focused on by the camera and is seen to be flailing aimlessly, shown first from where the girl was stood and then from the doorway of another room. The furniture onscreen is all quite old, and is soon smashed up by a tall grown man with a crowbar. We watch the man from more POV shots of the children, with a close up two shot of them to show their reactions to this too. The young girl finding kerosene on the floor forewarns the reader that there could be a fire, as kerosene is a form of fuel and fuel often signifies fire.
The young boy getting left alone finds discovers his father through using his torch to view the face of the attacker, the diagetic sound of smashing temporarily halted as he speaks. Meanwhile, the parallel editing allows the audience to see where the girl has run off to, to awaken her mother. Upon
doing so, we see another POV shot of a midshot of a white sheet on a bed, a lump underneath signifying her mother. When rolled over, the woman is discovered dead and we see a closeup shot of her to show the wounds. There is also blood on the white sheet which contrasts and denotes what is about to happen.

Overall this film uses it’s opening two minutes to establish the character of the two children, one as a brave yet playful young boy and the other as a scared little girl. It also introduces mystery to the film as to how the mother died, and why the father is now smashing up his own house, etc. This withholding of information is seen as expected now with horror films.