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The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook - by John Russo

John Russo, co-screenwriter of Night of the Living Dead and author of numerous horror novels, tells the story of how he and a bunch of friends and business partners rallied together to create what many (myself included) have called one of the greatest horror films of all time, the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead.

Although John Russo's The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook does not contain any information about Night of the Living Dead that I was not already well aware of - thanks to reading countless interviews, articles, and books in which the film's genesis, production, and eventual distribution woes were covered/discussed in great detail - it was nonetheless a quick and entertaining read.  It contains enough personal observations, memories and anecdotes that are not available in those countless other interviews, articles, and books to make tracking down this particular book worthwhile to fans of Night of the Living Dead in particular, and fans of John Russo and/or George Romero (who contributes a nicely written preface) in general.

There is also a wealth of production and movie stills, plentiful samples of Night's foreign and domestic advertising campaigns, and snippets of numerous positive reviews and articles.  (The negative reactions to Night are covered in Russo's text, but they were not given any illustrated lime light that I could see.)

The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook is John Russo's personal and professional memories of how he and bunch of friends and business partners somehow managed to get together and capture lightning in a bottle through hard work and determination to see a dream fulfilled.  It is not a serious study of the film and its eventual impact on the horror genre (both good and bad).  In fact, Russo goes out of his way to dismiss a lot of those studies and critical insights.  His viewpoint is plain and simple: the gang at The Latent Image and Image Ten set out to make the very best movie that they could possibly make with what they had...and they succeeded in doing so.  It wasn't easy, but the continuing artistic/commercial success that Romero, Russo and all the others that worked on Night of the Living Dead have had since is more than adequate proof that the film was far from the "One Hit Wonder" fluke it was often dismissed as so long ago.

Night of the Living Dead: Just A Girl

"So many ifs, for just a girl."

The year is 1968 and it is the start of daylight savings time.  Harry Cooper, along with is wife Helen and their adopted daughter Karen, is en route to an important job interview.  The Cooper family outing, however, is canceled by the sudden mass uprising of the dead.  Harry and Helen manage to evade the zombies, but Karen is bitten and soon becomes very ill.

Little Karen Cooper is probably Night of the Living Dead's most iconic character.  Her zombified visage adorns everything from books, to DVDs, to tee-shirts, to coffee mugs, and even decorative garden trowels.  When I learned that John Russo and Mike Wolfer would be writing a one shot back story for Karen's journey from being "just a girl" to one of the undead, I was interested, excited, and, to be honest, more than a bit uncertain of how the story would play out.  My interest and excitement turned out to be completely justified, while my uncertainty was, thankfully, ill-founded.  The story is a Charles Dickens influenced heart breaker.  So heartbreaking is the story of Karen's short and tragic life that its inevitable ending moved me to tears.  I'm not going to say that it will move every reader that way (and my own bereavement troubles/issues no doubt added to the overall effect), and some might even argue that Russo and Wolfer go more than a bit overboard.  Then again, in a world where the dead are returning to live and eating the living, the word "overboard" loses much of its meaning.

Karen's narrative arc also has a close resemblance in tone and style to that of the lead zombie's back story one in Avatar's Escape of the Living Dead: Fearbook one shot.  Somewhere along the line dying and becoming a zombie stopped being something horrific and became, if not a "better" way of life, at least a far simpler and, apparently, far less painful way of existing in this world.  My best guess would be its the influence of Bub, the zombie with a soul, from Romero's 1985 zombie apocalypse opus, Day of the Dead.  Your opinion might, and probably will, differ.

Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning #s 2 & 3

"What the hell is wrong with...you...?"

The situation at Beekman's Diner, and at Christine's Grandmother's farmhouse, turns evermore grim as the number of zombies grows.

After getting off to what seemed to be a promising start, Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning succumbed to the curse of the prequel, dramatizing events that blatantly contradict and/or undermine the preexisting story, rather than fleshing it out and giving the reader new insight into the characters, both old and new.  Although it has been more than a few years since I have actually watched Night of the Living Dead from beginning to end, many of the things that Ben sees and experiences at Beekman's diner do not jibe with the story that he will tell Barbra later that night.  Another criticism that I have regarding the book also skirts spoiler territory, as it involves my concerns regarding the numerous characters introduced in the first issue that are already doomed by a preordained plot.  Let me just say that my concerns turned out to be well founded and leave it at that.

Pesky prequel plot issues set to the side, I have to say that Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning is a pretty decent zombie story on its own.  The revelations of the nature of the threat, what the zombies do to their victims, and how the contagion is spread, are all woven through the unfolding events in a manner that establishes the now legendary Night of the Living Dead rules without calling too much attention to them.  However, readers that know more than a thing or two about how the very same revelations are presented in the film that follows this comic will no doubt mutter, "But wait a minute," a time or two, just as I did.  Another thing that impressed was just how well the events at the beginning of the film are interpolated into this new story, allowing the Night of the Living Dead knowledgeable reader to piece together a fairly specific time line of where the events in the comic fit into the film.  The ending also does an excellent job of both homaging and foreshadowing the film's (in)famous ending, and I think that the comic's closing image is perfect.

While the comic is nowhere near as good as the movie it is setting up, it still has enough good stuff in it to satisfy the curious, not to mention forgiving, Night of the Living Dead fan.

George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning #1

"...You'll be surprised by the things you're gonna see..."

It is 1968 and the time has changed to Daylight Savings.  People are going about their regular routine, but what they do not know is that, by nightfall, the world will also have changed, forever.  A dispersement of radiation into the upper atmosphere from a returning space probe has saturated the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, and the dead are starting to come to "life" and are attacking the living.

Prequels are a tricky thing, because the events, and eventual fates, that befall the characters are predetermined.  Most of the readers that crack open Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning will already be well aware that the ultimate resolution to the unfolding story is at the end of George A. Romero's classic movie and that the ending of this story arc will be the beginning of that film.  This foreknowledge makes the creation of a compelling story a rather daunting task.  But it appears that John Russo and sequential adapter Mike Wolfer might have been able to do just that, create an exciting story that ends where one of the most most famous horror films of all time will begin.

This is achieved by switching the focus of the narrative away from the characters everybody knows and onto ones whose undetermined fates can allow for a modicum of suspense.  Whatever fate befell the other people in Beekman's Diner is unknown, some could very well have managed to escape and even to survive the horrible night that followed.  (Although it is clear that most won't.)  These new characters are Christine (a waitress with a really nice ass) and her boyfriend Jim, Cathy (Judy's sister - you know, Tom and Judy) and, I'm guessing, her husband Don, and Eddie, a cemetery grounds keeper.  Christine, who works at Beekman's Diner, lives with her Grandmother in an isolated farmhouse (yes, that farmhouse).  Cathy and Don are returning, via bus, to their small town home in Willard, after having vacationed in Atlantic City.  Eddie and an assistant are digging a grave for a recently deceased acquaintance of Eddie's.  Fans of the classic movie should at least get a geeky thrill from seeing how each of these new characters fit into the pattern of events that will ultimately drive Ben, the Coopers, Judy, Tom, and, finally, Barbara to Christine's isolated farmhouse.  Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning has gotten off to a promising start, I can only hope that it will be able to maintain its narrative drive in its forthcoming installments.

Night of the Living Dead: Back from the Grave

"Our friend!  He's dead!!!  Can you guys...help...us..."

Three fiends quiet, and possibly romantic, evening around a campfire is ruined when the walking dead come shambling along.

This teaser for Avatar's fully-authorized three issue mini-series prequel to Night of the Living Dead, entitled Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning, barely qualifies as a one-shot.  If you want nothing more from it than some generic zombie action, with none of that plot and characterization junk cluttering up the events, then enjoy.  I prefer a little more meat on my zombie story bones and this book just didn't deliver.  I would even go so far as to say that, considering the $2.99 asking price, this teaser is nothing more than a rip-off.

I cannot say that the ad copy for the Night of the Living Dead: The Beginning mini-series got my hopes up all that much either.  It promises new insight into the film's characters and locations, dramatizing the events that befell Ben at Beekman's Diner and the family that lived in the farmhouse.  Background details about the cemetery zombie and Sheriff McClellan ("They're dead, they're all messed up.") will also be revealed.  But fans of Night of the Living Dead are already well aware of the eventual outcome of all theses events, so what is there to generate suspense?  Not a whole lot, I think.