By ROB FREESE
John A. Russo, filmmaker, author, legend
Obviously, most horror fans know John A. Russo as the co-writer of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The landscape of the modern horror film was forever changed as soon as Johnny teased his little sister in the cemetery with a croaky “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.” If you were unaware, Russo has been busy writing books and making films ever since.
Between his many film projects (his most recent, Lionsgate’s 2024 adaptation of his novel The Night They Came Home), Russo has delved into his writing career. He began in 1974 by penning the novelization to Night of the Living Dead for Warner Paperback Library. (It was published all over the world and has pretty much remained in print, somewhere, ever since.)
Years later, Russo, Rudy Ricci and Russell Streiner attempted to pool their resources to shoot a direct sequel to NOTLD, Return of the Living Dead, but the funds never materialized. In the hopes of building interest for the project, Russo adapted that script, and Dale Books published Return of the Living Dead in 1978. This really is the one that got away, as it is 
a legitimate direct sequel to the original film. It begins with the eerie country funeral of a little girl whose father must drive a spike through her head, so there’s no chance of her getting up again like that “incident ten years ago.” Sheriff Conan McClellan is a major player this time when a bus crash results in the dead rising once again. Just like the first time, nobody can get along, and the zombies swarm on every human they come in contact with for a quick, hot meal.
Had Russo and company been able to produce this sequel as written, I think it would be considered as much of a classic today as the original. As is, it is a fine follow-up courtesy of one of the original creators, and it’s the one book of Russo’s I’ve undoubtedly revisited the most.
Russo became a regular author of paperback originals from 1979 to 1986, publishing at least one new book a year, sometimes two. The Majorettes (1979) revolves around a mad slasher, a squad of pretty high school majorettes and an inheritance. This kicked off Russo’s association with Pocket Books, and The Majorettes was the first in a series of releases sporting foil covers. These books popped off the bookstore shelves. You couldn’t miss them.
Midnight, about a family of Satanists, followed in 1980. Then came Limb to Limb in 1981. Limb to Limb is my second favorite Russo novel. It’s the story of a dancer who loses a leg in a freak accident. Her wealthy father hires a pair of brothers, former Nazi doctors, to harvest the legs of other young, nubile dancers for transplants. I love this novel, and I think it was the first time Russo wrote about characters who were also filmmakers. He even references a little zombie movie that was made in Pittsburgh in 1968. (Pocket Books also reissued NOTLD in paperback in January of 1981.)
Published in 1982, Blood Sisters follows a young girl who joins a coven of men-hating witches. Black Cat was also released in 1982. This slasher about a madman who uses panthers to kill vacationers is another favorite of mine. It’s a fast-moving terror tale that wastes no time getting to the red stuff. It would make a perfect horror flick, and at one time, Russo was in talks with Sam Sherman of Independent-International Pictures about Al Adamson directing the movie version! (Oh, how the drive-in movie gods disappointed us by not ensuring this project came to fruition.)
In 1985, Russo wrote his most ambitious novel yet, a historical vampire story called The Awakening. It concerns Benjamin Latham, a colonial doctor put to death for practicing “the devil’s medicine.” When bulldozers strip the land where his skeletal remains rest, Latham awakens in 1983 Pittsburgh. It’s a great “stranger in a strange land” story, and the stakes (no pun intended) are raised when he finds a descendant of his bloodline. (Russo later adapted it to film as Heart Stopper, changing the title so people wouldn’t confuse it with the 1980 Charlton Heston mummy movie.)
1985 saw both the tech-horror thriller Day Care, about micro technology turning teens into fiends (it was later re-released under the more appropriate title The Academy), and the Return of the Living Dead novelization of Dan O’Bannon’s film. (The Return of the Living Dead novel was sold to film producer Tom Fox, but only the title was used, as O’Bannon decided to move as far away from the “Romero-type zombie” as possible.) As far as I know, this novelization was only ever published by Arrow Books in the U.K. and has not been reprinted.
Russo also wrote the popular The Complete Night of the Living Dead Film Book for Harmony Books in 1985. I’m pretty sure, just like Tom Savini’s Grand Illusions (or Bizarro, depending on which version you found), every fan has a copy in their library.
The sort-of zombie novel Inhuman followed in 1986. I say “sort of” because a group of militants is rendered brain-dead after the oxygen is cut off in their plane. When it comes down near a retreat populated by snake-handling Pentecostals, it’s a gory free-for-all, but these are not classic living dead zombies. They’re living, but brain-dead. Inhuman is another original novel that would make a fantastic horror flick!
While trying to build interest in a new film in 1987, Russo released a signed and numbered limited-edition hardback of Voodoo Dawn, a traditional tale of Haitian zombies. This is not a full-length novel, more of a novella. It was released by Imagine, a company Russo was a part-owner of at the time. (A film version was eventually made, featuring Raymond St. Jacques, Tony Todd and Gina Gershon in 1990, but it was vastly different from Russo’s story.)
1988 saw the release of Living Things from Popular Library. This is definitely Russo’s most ambitious living dead novel, as it pits a Haitian sorcerer against Miami gangsters. This novel expanded on the ideas of Voodoo Dawn, using them as a jumping-off point to one of the best zombie novels ever written.
Next, Russo turned his writing efforts to non-fiction, writing what many consider the bible of independent filmmaking, Making Movies (Dell, 1989). A significant tome for filmmakers the world over, the book explores what it takes to make your own movie, right down to budget breakdowns and sample contracts. It offers real-world information gleaned from twenty years in the trenches of independent cinema, and it’s as important today as it was nearly 40 years ago when it was released, especially with the current boom of independent filmmaking.
Scare Tactics followed from Dell in 1992, and then in 1995, How to Make Your Own Feature Movie for $10,000 or Less (Zinn P.G.), a book that didn’t nearly have the impact it should have upon its publication, but now is possibly one of the most important books for indie filmmakers in this age of streaming. Much like Making Movies, it breaks down the ins and outs of making films on videotape to go directly into video distribution. It offers a plethora of advice about how to shoot a movie and get it distributed, or distribute it yourself, and follows up with interviews by people known in the business at the time for doing just that, like J.R. Bookwalter, Mark Steven Bosko and Gary Whitson, among others.
The inspiration for this book came while Russo was making his own $10,000 feature, the shot-on-video sequel Midnight 2. In How to Make Your Own Feature Movie for $10,000 or Less, Russo again offers practical advice for shooting cheaply and quickly, using his own production as an example. A lot has changed technology-wise since this book was released, and streaming has opened the floodgates for films made for a lot less. Russo re-released the book himself in 2015. Now might be a good time to update it for the streaming age.
Returning to fiction, 1995 saw the release of Hell’s Creation (Ravenmor/Commonwealth Publications), Russo’s sequel to Midnight, which follows a young girl brought into a Satanic cult led by Cynthia Barnes, the surviving Barnes sibling from the original novel. She runs a cult, and now has the son of Satan, a boy raised from infancy to believe he is heir to the Devil’s legacy. Mix in a vengeful sister of a victim killed by the psychotic Barnes brood and an Easter morning orgy of depravity for more fun. It’s a lean, fast-paced shocker that proved Russo still had plenty of disturbing horror stories to tell. To the best of my knowledge, this novel has never been reprinted, which is a shame for fans of the original. (In the back of this paperback, there is a page announcing reprints of Russo’s full back catalogue in new editions by Ravenmor/Commonwealth Publications. I never ran across any of these releases.)
After Hell’s Creation, Ravenmor/Commonwealth Publications released The Sanity Ward, a psychological conspiracy thriller/shocker. I’ve never been able to track down this edition, but I finally caught up with it when Wolfpack Publishing reprinted it in 2023.
I suspect Russo continued writing fiction, but nothing was published while he worked on various film projects through 2010, when Kensington released Undead, a paperback reprint of both his Night of the Living Dead novelization and the original Return of the Living Dead. The first time both novels had been published together in an affordable paperback was cause for fans to rejoice. (It should be noted that Undead was also released as a signed, limited-edition hardback from Cemetery Dance Publishing, also in 2010.)
Undead sparked a fire in Russo that has been burning brightly for sixteen years now. Kensington next released The Hungry Dead in 2013, which collected Russo’s original 1980 novel Midnight with the all-new zombie romp Escape from the Living Dead. For Living Dead fans, Escape is fast-paced and gory and a fine third chapter to his Living Dead saga. (It was later adapted as a comic series.)
Dealey Plaza arrived in 2014 from Burning Bulb Publishing. It is a thriller based on the 1963 assassination of JFK. A topic near and dear to Russo, he wrote a character in Day Care who made a documentary film called Dealey Plaza in 1986.
Kensington released Russo’s zombie novel Epidemic of the Living Dead in 2018 (just two years before the Covid-19 pandemic!), which exists in the same world as his three previous Living Dead novels.
In 2019, Russo self-published Spawn of the Living Dead, an unproduced screenplay. Ideas from this script later popped up in other novels.
Since 2022, Russo has published roughly three to six novels/novellas a year, with 2024 being his peak with eleven new releases. I suspect some may have sat in a drawer waiting for their time to finally be released, but regardless, it has been a very prolific period for him. Recent years have seen him try his hand at various genres, including Western, science fiction, mystery and comedy, in addition to his horror endeavors.
If you’re a fan of John Russo but only know him as a filmmaker, I urge you to check out his fiction. Many of his early books are still available in new editions as well as ebooks and audiobooks. Many of his new novels incorporate fandom into their plots. The Christmas Massacre (2025, Burning Bulb Publishing) takes place in and around a horror convention (and Russo himself appears as a guest at the con). Ghosts of the Living Dead (2025, Burning Bulb Publishing) is set in the house where Night of the Living Dead 1990 was shot, and again, Russo is a character who attends a fan event at the location.
If you know your Night of the Living Dead lore, you know one of Russo’s early concepts for the movie included bodies found in glass cases coming to life. He further develops the idea in Dead Boys (2024, Burning Bulb Publishing). If you are curious to see this idea expanded to full form, check it out.
John A. Russo has been a significant influence on our horror heritage for seven decades. He is a bestselling author and a fiercely independent filmmaker, but that barely scratches the surface of everything he has done and is still doing. He is also a teacher who has helped countless aspiring writers and filmmakers achieve their dreams. To our great benefit, he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
John A. Russo Bibliography (Title and original year of publication)
FICTION:
Night of the Living Dead (1974)
Return of the Living Dead (1978)
The Majorettes (1979)
Midnight (1980)
Limb to Limb (1981)
Blood Sisters (1982)
Black Cat (1982)
The Awakening (1985)
Day Care (1985)
Inhuman (1986)
Voodoo Dawn (1987)
Living Things (1989)
Hell’s Creation (1995)
The Sanity Ward (1995)
Undead [Reprint of Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead] (2010)
The Hungry Dead [Reprint of Midnight and the all-new novel Escape from the Living Dead] (2013)
The Academy [Retitled/updating of Day Care] (2014)
The Booby Hatch [Novelization] (2014)
Dealey Plaza (2014)
Belly Timber (2015- Co-written with Solon Tsangaras and Gary Lee Vincent)
Epidemic of the Living Dead (2018)
My Uncle John is a Zombie [Novelization] (2018)
Etta (2022)
The Killer Next Door (2022)
The Killing Truth (2022)
The Night They Came Home (2022)
The Unearthly (2022)
Weep No More (2022)
The Hog Lady (2023)
Passion, Pleasure, and Pain (2023)
1-800 Vampire (2024)
Channel 666 (2024)
The Darkest Web (2024)
Dead Boys (2024)
Dead Lives Matter (2024)
Dead Time in Deadwood (2024)
Die Laughing (2024)
The Christmas Massacre (2025)
Ghosts of the Living Dead (2025)
Uncle John Goes to Washington (2025)
Simon Rocail Novels:
The Price of Admission (2022)
Paranormal Obsession (2023)
David Cristi and Vito Martinelli Mysteries:
The Charlatan (2024)
A Long-Ago Murder (2024)
The Killer and The Movie Star (2024)
The Hate Crime (2024)
NON-FICTION:
The Complete Night of the Living Dead Film Book (1985)
Making Movies (1989)
Scare Tactics (1992)
How to Make Your Own Feature Movie for $10,000 or Less (1995)
The Busy Executive’s Exercise Manual (2012)
The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook & Scrapbook: Memories & Memorabilia for Fans & Filmmakers (2012)
Return of the Living Dead [Script] (2012)
The Death of Our Democracy: An American Horror Story (2012)
My Life with the Undead: Deluxe Full-Color Edition (2012)
My Uncle John is a Zombie!: A Horror Comedy [Script] (2015)
How to Make Exciting Money-Making Movies (Black and White Ed.): Your Film School In A Book! (2015)
My Life with the Living Dead: Autobiography (2017)
Trumped Up!: America in Peril (2018)
Spawn of the Living Dead [Script] (2019)
John Russo’s Night of the Living Dead 1990 Illustrated History (2020)
John Russo’s Dirty Jokes (2021)
How to Get Rich if You’re a Baby! (2026)
How I Gave Birth To The Return of the Living Dead (2026)
