Return of the Living Dead (UK: Arrow Books, 1985)
Tagline: "They're back from the grave and ready to
party!"
This one is an anomaly of sorts. It might get
complicated, so pay attention. In 1978, John Russo
(who co-wrote the classic Night of the Living Dead with
George Romero) wrote a novel called Return of the
Living Dead. When it was to be filmed, after the original
director bowed out, Dan O'Bannon was brought in to
re-write the script and ended up directing it. By the time
Tagline: "They're back from the grave and ready to
party!"
This one is an anomaly of sorts. It might get
complicated, so pay attention. In 1978, John Russo
(who co-wrote the classic Night of the Living Dead with
George Romero) wrote a novel called Return of the
Living Dead. When it was to be filmed, after the original
director bowed out, Dan O'Bannon was brought in to
re-write the script and ended up directing it. By the time
he was done, the project resembled John Russo's novel pretty much in name only.
Russo was given screenwriting credit though it was more of a "creative consultant"
kind of thing. So the movie was made. When it was time for the novelization, they
threw the bone to Russo who wrote a novelization of the screenplay based on the
title and not the content of the book he had earlier written. At which point Russo,
instead of writing his novelization directly off the script, changed character names and
added new plot elements, farther straying away from his earlier novel. Got all that?
Good. Sounds like a movie based on making this movie would have been more
interesting than the movie itself.
But onto our book, Return of the Living Dead.
First off we meet Freddy Travis who works at a medical supply warehouse called
Uneeda. Freddy's trying to clean up his act since his friend died of an overdose.
Freddy's boss, Frank, shows him the ropes, pointing out all the goodies stored in the
warehouse, everything from human skeletons to organs to a dog that is split in half
and mounted. He takes him downstairs where the corpses are and shows him bodies
inside barrels that belong to the U.S. Army (zombie specimens from the original Night
of the Living Dead outbreak). Opening the cap on one of the barrels, Frank decides
they can't see the body good enough so they tip it and it falls over and spills all over
the place...releasing a chemical gas that makes them pass out and reanimates the
dead things in the warehouse and in the appropriately named Resurrection Cemetery
next door. And that is the hinge upon which our story swings. Regaining
consciousness, Freddy and Frank decide to clean up the spill and that's when they
realize that everything from the split dog to the corpses in the cold room are alive and
pissed off, screaming and banging at the door to get out. That's when Frank calls the
Army emergency number to explain the problem.
And it is quite a problem, as one cop discovers:
"He whirled and fired, blowing one of the ghouls apart, blasting flying chunks of
gristle and bone and dead meat out of its abdomen so that the torso was cut in
two--but the two halves of the thing continued to writhe and crawl in the muddy
grass."
Because you just can't keep a good corpse down:
"Lightning flashed, and he saw a corpse looking right up into his eyes, with blood all
over its mouth and chin. It was munching on a human arm that still wore a tatter of a
white paramedic uniform. The corpse was old and hideous, mostly a skeleton held
together by tendons and dried, decayed skin."
Russo seemed to be having fun in this book, describing Ghastly, Gruesome, and
Gor-ifying events with splendor. We get to find out about Operation Drummer Boy,
the Army cover-up, some CIA spooks that defected to the Russians, the KGB's aims
to make the zombie horror overtake the U.S. And if that isn't enough, we have
brain-munching zombies galore and some unintentionally hilarious 1980's "New Wave"
types...or what writers and directors seemed to think they were. The movie itself
was presented as kind of a horror-comedy like Reanimator, but a lot of the funny
stuff in the film doesn't translate so well to the printed page (and maybe that's not
such a bad thing). Going off-topic slightly, I've always wondered if the seed of
Russo's/Romero's Night of the Living Dead wasn't the following from Ornella Volta's
book The Vampire:
"Given the greater number of dead than living on this earth, a revolt of the dead
against the living who had buried them would certainly end in defeat for the latter."
Pros: Like the movie itself, this is a fun slice of 1980's pop culture...with zombies and
ridiculous teenagers. You gotta love that medical/anatomical warehouse and the split
dog!
Cons: The characters are about as cardboard as you would suspect and their
motivations are often silly as in any 1980's horror film (Freddy and Frank attempting
to mop up the toxic waste is a good example).
Overall: Like the novelization of Piranha, I had a good time with this and it makes for
a fast read with nary a plot complication to tax your brain.
3½ bloody skulls out of five.
Next month's Guilty Pleasure:
"From the blackest pits of hell..."
Russo was given screenwriting credit though it was more of a "creative consultant"
kind of thing. So the movie was made. When it was time for the novelization, they
threw the bone to Russo who wrote a novelization of the screenplay based on the
title and not the content of the book he had earlier written. At which point Russo,
instead of writing his novelization directly off the script, changed character names and
added new plot elements, farther straying away from his earlier novel. Got all that?
Good. Sounds like a movie based on making this movie would have been more
interesting than the movie itself.
But onto our book, Return of the Living Dead.
First off we meet Freddy Travis who works at a medical supply warehouse called
Uneeda. Freddy's trying to clean up his act since his friend died of an overdose.
Freddy's boss, Frank, shows him the ropes, pointing out all the goodies stored in the
warehouse, everything from human skeletons to organs to a dog that is split in half
and mounted. He takes him downstairs where the corpses are and shows him bodies
inside barrels that belong to the U.S. Army (zombie specimens from the original Night
of the Living Dead outbreak). Opening the cap on one of the barrels, Frank decides
they can't see the body good enough so they tip it and it falls over and spills all over
the place...releasing a chemical gas that makes them pass out and reanimates the
dead things in the warehouse and in the appropriately named Resurrection Cemetery
next door. And that is the hinge upon which our story swings. Regaining
consciousness, Freddy and Frank decide to clean up the spill and that's when they
realize that everything from the split dog to the corpses in the cold room are alive and
pissed off, screaming and banging at the door to get out. That's when Frank calls the
Army emergency number to explain the problem.
And it is quite a problem, as one cop discovers:
"He whirled and fired, blowing one of the ghouls apart, blasting flying chunks of
gristle and bone and dead meat out of its abdomen so that the torso was cut in
two--but the two halves of the thing continued to writhe and crawl in the muddy
grass."
Because you just can't keep a good corpse down:
"Lightning flashed, and he saw a corpse looking right up into his eyes, with blood all
over its mouth and chin. It was munching on a human arm that still wore a tatter of a
white paramedic uniform. The corpse was old and hideous, mostly a skeleton held
together by tendons and dried, decayed skin."
Russo seemed to be having fun in this book, describing Ghastly, Gruesome, and
Gor-ifying events with splendor. We get to find out about Operation Drummer Boy,
the Army cover-up, some CIA spooks that defected to the Russians, the KGB's aims
to make the zombie horror overtake the U.S. And if that isn't enough, we have
brain-munching zombies galore and some unintentionally hilarious 1980's "New Wave"
types...or what writers and directors seemed to think they were. The movie itself
was presented as kind of a horror-comedy like Reanimator, but a lot of the funny
stuff in the film doesn't translate so well to the printed page (and maybe that's not
such a bad thing). Going off-topic slightly, I've always wondered if the seed of
Russo's/Romero's Night of the Living Dead wasn't the following from Ornella Volta's
book The Vampire:
"Given the greater number of dead than living on this earth, a revolt of the dead
against the living who had buried them would certainly end in defeat for the latter."
Pros: Like the movie itself, this is a fun slice of 1980's pop culture...with zombies and
ridiculous teenagers. You gotta love that medical/anatomical warehouse and the split
dog!
Cons: The characters are about as cardboard as you would suspect and their
motivations are often silly as in any 1980's horror film (Freddy and Frank attempting
to mop up the toxic waste is a good example).
Overall: Like the novelization of Piranha, I had a good time with this and it makes for
a fast read with nary a plot complication to tax your brain.
3½ bloody skulls out of five.
Next month's Guilty Pleasure:
"From the blackest pits of hell..."
