I hesitate to name a single title for the honor of Best Film About Creepy Authority Figures In NBC Suits, because that genre includes classics like Alex Cox’s L.A. punk classic Repo Man and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, the greatest film by the greatest living American filmmaker. But I can give an enthusiastic thumb up to George A. Romero’s 1973 conspiracy thriller The Crazies, which centers on the Defense Department’s (failed) effort to contain an outbreak of a bio-agent in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

I am not claiming The Crazies is a masterpiece. It features many of the weaknesses of early Romero pictures: choppy editing, poor sound pickups, overly facetious musical cues, and some really undistinguished lighting.

But The Crazies also has many of Romero’s strengths: very earnest performances by no-name actors, occasionally beautiful images, convincingly lived-in mise-en-scène, and open-mindedness about the horrific scenario it lays out. The movie makes very clear that Trixie, the disease the Army is determined to wipe out even at the cost of destroying an American town, is a real threat to humanity. But the dignity of the locals who fight back against the government’s quarantine effort is not disparaged, and the movie’s complexity (which may be why it didn’t really catch on, although I remember bowdlerized cuts of The Crazies playing frequently on local TV when I was a kid) is maintained until the last frame. In a movie environment dominated by both cheap happy endings and cheap unhappy endings, Romero stands out for having a real sense of tragedy. There are no easy answers. And while Romero is a celebrated Midnight Movie filmmaker, The Crazies also shows what a traditionalist he is. Geography is made clear and respected throughout the movie. Every time somebody gets shot, you see who pulled the trigger and who got hit. And during a brief conference-call-with-the-president scene, the chief executive of the U.S.A. is seen only from the back of his head — a movie trope that even in 1973 was so hokey Romero’s use of it shows great humor and chutzpah.

The Crazies was remade in 2010 with what looks like a terrific cast and what I presume are 21st-century bells and whistles. But the original has had me thinking since I first saw it more than 30 years ago, and it’s available at full length on The YouTubes. (Linked rather than embedded for violence, brief nudity, and downbeat adult themes.)