The Crazies appeared 22 years before Wolfgang Petersen's virus epidemic blockbuster Outbreak (1995) starring Dustin Hoffman, yet many scenes in it - especially the ones involving the protective white-suited task force - seem to mirror events in the Romero film.

Richard France, who appears as Dr. Watts in The Crazies, is also a writer and film critic. A well-known Orson Welles scholar, he appears in the documentary, The Battle Over Citizen Kane, which aired on PBS.

After seeing The Crazies, producer Richard Rubinstein wanted to meet Romero and their introduction led to a rewarding collaboration with Rubenstein serving as his partner on Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981) and many other films.

The song under the closing end credits for The Crazies - "Heaven Help Us" - was sung by Beverly Bremers and composed by Carole Bayer Sager and Melissa Manchester. Ms. Sager would go on to pen the lyrics to "Nobody Does It Better" (the theme songs from The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977), "Through the Eyes of Love" from Ice Castles (1978) and other films. She married composer Burt Bacharach in 1982 and they collaborated on many songs including the hit, "On My Own." Melissa Manchester was once a backup singer for Bette Midler and began her solo career in 1973 with the debut album, "Home to Myself." She became a Grammy award-winning singer and hit-maker with such songs as "You Should Hear How She Talks About You."

The Crazies was one of several movies that Romero shot in Pennsylvania including his later Stephen King adaptation, The Dark Half (1993), which was filmed in Pittsburgh. For a brief period that city was a popular movie location that was spotlighted in Mrs. Soffel (1984), Groundhog Day (1993), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Striking Distance (1993) and many others.

Producer Ivan Reitman saw Lynn Lowry in The Crazies and decided to cast her in David Cronenberg's They Came from Within (aka Shivers, 1975). She later said that she accidentally stabbed Cronenberg on the set during the filming of a violent scene where his arm was visible as the attacker.

Lynn Lowry made her film debut in Lloyd Kaufman's The Battle of Love's Return (1971). Kaufman would go on to found Troma Pictures, home of no-budget exploitation films such as The Toxic Avenger (1985) and Surf Nazis Must Die (1987). Lynn Lowry gave up feature filmmaking temporarily for theatre work in the nineties and is currently performing as a cabaret singer, though in 2005 she began making film appearances again.

Sources:
The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
Incredibly Strange Films (Re/Search)
Dark Visions: Conversations with the Masters of the Horror Film by Stanley Wiater
The Cinema of George Romero: Knight of the Living Dead by Tony Williams
The Crazies DVD Commentary by George Romero (Blue Underground)

Compiled by Jeff Stafford