Return Of The Living Dead

The Living Dead #2

by John A. Russo

On his first day on the job at an army surplus store, poor Freddy unwittingly releases nerve gas from a secret U.S. military canister, unleashing an unbelievable terror. The gas re-animates a corps of corpses, who arise from their graves with a ravenous hunger for human brains! And luckily for those carnivorous cadavers, there is a group of partying teens nearby, just waiting to be eaten!

NOTE TO READERS:
This novel is based on the film of the same name, and is markedly different from the earlier novel of the same title by John Russo, which was originally published by Hamlyn Paperbacks.

Genres: Horror, Zombies, Fiction, Apocalyptic

Unknown Binding

First published February 15, 1979

About the author

John A. Russo, sometimes credited as Jack Russo or John Russo, is an American screenwriter and film director most commonly associated with the 1968 horror classic film Night of the Living Dead. As a screenwriter, his credits include Night of the Living Dead, The Majorettes, Midnight, and Santa Claws. The latter two, he also directed. He has performed small roles as an actor, most notably the first ghoul who is stabbed in the head in Night of the Living Dead.

Reviews

[Brendon Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is all around FUN! It short, fast paced and gets straight into the action.

10 years after the dead had risen from the ground and were conquered they return with the intent of feeding on human flesh...Its up to Sherrif McClellan and the town to put a stop to the horde once and for all.

It has some gnarly descriptions of the zombies and their attacks and some vile characters in the form of looters and rapists who take advantage of the world being torn apart.

A big thank you has to go out to Fathom Press for re-releasing this hard to find (for cheap) classic. It has a interesting chapter on the history of the novel and how the subsequent movie was changed to be more comedic. This novel is played straight and is nothing like the movie but its a definite must read. It packs a punch in its short page count! Plus that amazing cover art by Stephen Andrade is perfect!

[Stay Fetters · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Three ghouls were on him. His screams had stopped. The dead things were chewing at his face, his arms, tearing and digging at the soft flesh of his stomach to get at the organs inside. One of Bert Miller's eyes stared wide at the ceiling; the socket of the other eye was empty, gushing fluid and blood."

Getting my hands on a copy of this book has always been a dream of mine. Any horror book collector has a few books that they would kill to get their hands on and this is one of those books for me. I never purchased a book faster when I saw one come up for sale signed by the author. It is now part of my collection and guarded, so don't try anything funny.

If you are looking for a novelization of the movie then look elsewhere. This is nothing like it and I love it. This to me was more horrifying than the movie. It gives you human connection where you feel for the people trying to escape being torn apart by ghouls, it has twisted people trying to steal their way to safety, and lots of gory deaths. It makes it one devilishly delicious read and one of my favorites.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Russo is always hit or miss or really miss. This one fell in between. The sequel to Night Of The Living Dead was not so much a sequel, but a revisiting of the original. There was a few new things thrown in, but the action pretty much takes place in a farm house. I know it takes place 10 years after the first story in the same place, but still, place the story somewhere new. When some survivors breakout they head to another farm house. If the ending wasn't so telegraphed I may have liked it more. Still a good time waster from a time when zombies were more of an underground genre Not like today where things like Plants Vs Zombies are marketed to kids and almost every other movie or horror book is a BAD zombie movie/book.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sequel to the original novelization. Unless my memory is off, and that is totally possible, the movie Return of the Living Dead doesn't not follow this book. This book takes place 10 years after Night of the Living Dead, and in a similar rural area as the first. In this story, many people still feel that you need to behead a person who is deceased or impale the head with a stake in order to ensure that they don't come back as zombies, but others just think this is supernatural nonsense. They will find out differently of course....

This book had some really creepy parts and I was hooked from the beginning. A great story to add to the zombie genre and one of the first!

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is that no character is off limits for being killed. This lends a touch of realism that adds to the horror aspect.

[Justin Martell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to see where the inarguably lesser-talented Night of the Living Dead co-creator chose to take the series. Both Russo and Romero are clearly preoccupied with societal decay, government incompetence, and institutional denial, but they approach those themes very differently. Romero’s Dead cycle never locks itself into a rigid timeline. Night through Land feel like fragments of the same ongoing catastrophe, showing how different groups respond to the same collapse across one extended outbreak.

Russo, by contrast, takes a more literal and oddly restrained route. In his sole major written follow-up, Return of the Living Dead, he jumps ten years ahead, returns to the same stretch of rural Pennsylvania, and treats the original zombie outbreak as a contained incident that only affected the northeastern United States. The government and public response is essentially collective amnesia, an almost willful decision to forget it ever happened, to the point that there is no real preparedness for its return. Thoughts and prayers, right. In that sense, the book lands closer to home than Russo probably intended.

As with Romero, the zombies function primarily as a narrative accelerant. They push events forward while the real horror remains human behavior. There is some vividly described action here, and Russo can stage chaos well enough to keep the pages turning. Where the novel falters is in its people. Romero’s sequels expand the world and introduce characters who linger. Russo stays boxed into Night’s moral grayness without reproducing its power. None of the characters here approach the impact of Ben or Cooper. Instead, we get catatonic women, forgettable heroes, and indistinct antagonists who blur together. Like Night, everyone exists in shades of gray, but without Romero’s precision, those shades feel muted rather than unsettling.

In the end, Return of the Living Dead is an interesting alternate path for the mythology, occasionally sharp in its social commentary, but ultimately limited by its refusal or inability to grow beyond the shadow of its origin.

[Justin Hawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoilers Below!

Rounded up from 3.5 star review. I listened to this on Audible, as it was nearly impossible to track down a physical copy or a Kindle copy.

[WARNING: The Kindle edition claims to be this novel, it is not. it is the screenplay of Return of the Living Dead, or perhaps a draft Russo wrote for Return. I'm not sure. I didn't read it once I realized it wasn't prose.]

So I am a big fan of the Night of the Living Dead and the Return of the Living Dead franchises. When I read that the Return franchise was headed by John Russo, one of the co-creators of the original Night film, and that it was based on his novel, I had to read this.

SPOILERS:

The narrative of this novel has nothing to do with the story presented in the Return film. The creators of the film created an entirely different narrative and set of characters, probably to appeal to the 80's horror fans who were mostly teenagers and college students.

All of that being said, the book presents a large cast of characters dropped in a very tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, much like the original Night of the Living Dead film. In the original Night film, we see that human fear and our strive for survival can be every bit as dangerous as the advancing horde of cannibalistic ghouls. Russo continues that theme here, but ramps it up quite a bit. Not only do the protagonists have to contend with the living dead, but there are those living devils who race, pillage, and plunder any time there is social chaos...

So trigger warning: sexual assault and rape are very much a recurring element in this short novel.

I enjoyed the narrator as well. Not much to say there. He's not overly dramatic to the point of being a distraction. In my opinion his delivery is perfect for this bleak little tale of terrors.

All-in-all, I found this novel to be a competent successor to the Night of the Living Dead film. It is short, brutal, and bleak right up to the conclusion. If you're looking for standard zombie fair that plays all the hits, it's right here. The novel is short and the entire story is here, but I felt that the author could have expanded this novel by 50 - 75%. You know... rub our noses in it a little bit more.

Anyway, that's it for me. This is going into my Halloween playlist rotation.

Happy listening, Dead Heads! 🎃

[Dawn Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let’s talk about it. More of a character study than about the zombies, as Night and sequels have always been thought to be. It was a true sequel to Night of the Living Dead as in ten years from the first incident, people start turning into zombies again. It was fun. Just know this is not the “rave to the grave” Return of the Living Dead like the movie. Although he did write that one too and I will be looking for it!

[Anthony Crabtree · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a quick read, and a solid followup to Night of the Living Dead. It feels a bit cheaper, and a bit pulpier, but it's fun enough.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A huge fan of the 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, I was fairly certain I’d enjoy this book. And Return of the Living Dead was a fun reading experience.

There was ooey gooey graphic consumption of human flesh, emotional turmoil, and the living acting like *they* were the brain dead ones. Mostly, I enjoyed Russo’s ability to go one step further to make the situation that much worse for the characters just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

[G.D. Bowlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're reading this, then you probably already know that John A. Russo co-wrote The Night of the Living Dead. The man's a legend. So it pains me to go full roast mode here, but this book was truly, truly awful.

The ideas were fine, though there was nothing particularly surprising in here. Much of it felt like a retread of "Night," with a bunch of people stuck in a farmhouse. It does pick up a bit after they leave, and there are a couple of clever turns as we move toward the ending.

In case you were wondering, the big idea here is that the humans are the real monsters. Wow.

So what didn't work?

The characters were all absolutely flat and one dimensional. We learn nothing about their past lives, their interior thoughts and desires, nothing. I don't know even know what TV shows these people liked to watch. There is, and I'm not exagerrating, nothing to these characters. The most we get is a guy who doesn't like that his daughters go on dates, but sometimes it's okay, because consistency of character is also meaningless. Everyone else is either basically good, usually defined by the fact that they're a cop, or basically bad, usually defined when our omniscient narrator has told us that they've committed a sexual assault at some point "off camera." In between all these cops and rapists there are some women who seem to barely know where they are at any given moment.

95% of the dialogue in here is totally unnecessary, as it's just a character verbalizing what they're doing or making some obvious conclusion. For example, at one point a character steals another character's gun. The victim of the gun theft says, quote, "Hey, that's my gun! We need it to defend ourselves!" Thanks for clarifying that. Aside from just being dull, this makes the book feel awfully repetitive, as we get the same information over and over again, often within the same couple of paragraphs.

Finally, we get to the real culprit behind why this book is just so, so bad. Russo's writing style. I'm not trying to be cruel, but this thing's like a high schooler's "Living Dead" fan fiction. It reads somewhere between a screenplay and a technical repair manual. All tell, no show. Russo blandly narrates out the action beats of what people are doing without ever really painting a scene or putting us into the moment with the characters. (Thankfully, this means that there is very little dialogue.) You never feel like you're in the world. Your held at arm's length by stilted, simplistic prose. It's like listening to a kid tell a story that goes "and then, and then, and then."

Avoid.

[Sol Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

It turns out George A. Romero was (unsurprisingly) the member of the pair with all of the imagination because John Russo’s sequel to Night of the Living Dead is a (pardon the pun) lifeless rehash of the film.

It establishes an interesting premise — the notion that the events of the film were not apocalyptic or even particularly widespread — that ten years later, pockets of local society have evolved to live in a world where the dead once came back to life and attacked people.

The problem is that the world feels completely unreal. If something like Night of the Living Dead happened, then the idea of it being largely forgotten over ten years to the point that most people are completely unprepared to deal with it when it happens again, to the point that scientists haven’t bothered to study the phenomenon in the slightest and to the point that the government send a space probe on a return trip to Venus again despite radiation from the satellite 10 years ago being the leading theory for what made the dead come back to life is just ridiculous.

The characters are all bland, boring and unlikeable and just fall into a rut of trying to survive the zombie onslaught in a farm house once more.

I’m not sure why — I guess it’s down to the writing — but the event never feels like an apocalypse — more just like a minor inconvenience where a few people die from time to time. And for some reason, Russo is obsessed with rape as if the first thing every man would do during a zombie apocalypse is start trying to rape people. It’s a bit weird.

Russo also repeats himself a lot with ideas and themes coming up several times over the course of the book as if he was desperately trying to hit a word count and forgot he’d already written a chapter on that particular aspect of the story.

It’s zombie nonsense so it goes down easily but it’s considerably weaker than the novelisation of Night of the Living Dead that it’s a sequel to — not to mention the fantastic movie (very loosely) based on this book. Inexplicably, John Russo also wrote a novelisation of the movie adaptation of this book in perhaps the most blatantly ouroboros example of pop eating itself in the history of literature.

5/10

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Russo co-wrote "Night of the Living Dead" with George Romero, and this novel is essentially his vision for the continuation of the events from that film. The novel is set ten years into the future from when the bodies of the dead initially started rising up and making a meal out of the local populace. Eventually, things returned to normal for people that survived the initial zombie (or ghoul) uprising, but there are those that still fear it could happen again. They believe that all of the bodies of the recently deceased should have spikes driven into their heads to prevent history from repeating itself. Based on the title of the book, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that their fears eventually come to fruition and the buffet is back in business.

I enjoyed the descriptive writing and thought Mr. Russo did a good job of creating images in my head as I read through the book, whether it was the macabre fate of many of the book's characters or the desolate rural landscape that much of the book takes place. At approximately 160 pages, it makes for a brisk weekend read for someone that enjoys traditional zombie carnage.

It should be noted that while Mr. Russo was involved to a degree in the creation of the 1985 film "Return of the Living Dead," the only similarities to it and this novel are the title, that they both involve the undead, and that they both make reference to the events of "Night of the Living Dead." The genesis of that film as well as this novel can be explored in detail in the book "The Complete History of The Return of the Living Dead" by Christian Sellers and Gary Smart, and the documentary "More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead," both of which I also recommend.

[Paul Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh, this direct sequel to Night of the Living Dead kind of sucks. I only powered through because it is a lovely limited edition hardback containing both novels, signed by the author John Russo, that my girlfriend bought me VERY early into our relationship. It's been like ten years now and I still hadn't read it, and am locked up inside for the time being, so figured now was the time. It was a slog though, difficult to focus on the story that drags and repeats itself constantly, and I found myself having to force my brain to pay attention just so I could be done with it. In the intro Russo talks about how he had nothing to do with Dan O'Bannon's film version of The Return of the Living Dead, and unofficial sequel to the original movie, but that's not the story he envisioned. THIS book is his vision, and THIS book is TRUE horror! That's how he kind of puts it. Not for me, I was totally bored.

[Craig Jex · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sequel to the novelisation of Night of the Living Dead. This was originally a script but the film didn’t get made so Russo turned his script into a novel. It’s essentially a rehash of the original Night of the Living Dead, with the sheriff being the only connection between both. This is a darker story compared to the original with more violence from the zombies and civilians who in the space of a day or so of the zombie outbreak turn into looters and rapists. The story itself doesn’t offer anything new to the zombie sub genre and the writing is lazy at times with some passages taken from the Night of the Living Dead book.

The eventual 1985 comedy horror classic film based on this book didn’t use much from its source material apart from the name Burt. That film is far superior to this book and to add further confusion Russo wrote the novelisation to that film using the exact same title. I’d be interested to read that version if I can find a copy.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I dunno about this. It supposedly an unproduced sequeal to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Russo claims to have written all the good ideas in the original script. Humble.

This story is standard zombie claptrap by now. The two twists are that the bad guys in the world are using the undead chaos to rape and plunder. And there is a baby.

The gore is light - with one exceptional death. And there is a scene where all the charaters are gathered in the living room and NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THE EATEN VICTIM IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT ROOM!!!

argh. Hate that stuff. Only because I made up a whole story about that dead body and all the people ignoring it. And frankly, it was a better story than the one that ended up in this book.

Read it if you are a Romero completest like me.

[James Jeans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I drift somewhere between hating this book and thinking it's alright.

It's no wonder the Dan O'Bannon film ignored Russo's original screenplay, on which this book is based. It's just a basic rehash of the original film, right down to the major players spending a big chunk of time sealed up in a farm house, and one of the main characters being accidentally shot to death by the sheriff's posse.

There is some weirdness surrounding a baby that's born during this outbreak that is never resolved, and seems designed as sequel bait, which I'm pretty sure never came (in book format or otherwise).

Really, you can just stick with the original film/novelization. This books adds nothing to the franchise/mythology.

[Alan Terrif · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first zombie book I read as a child and it shaped my love of the genre forever. This was written as a direct sequel to the classic Night of the Living Dead. Mr. Russo was one of the screenwriters of the original movie. This bares no relation to the movie of the same name, but is an enjoyable journey into Romero's universe. Scary, gory and everything you'd want from a good zombie book.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Return of the Living Dead. John Russo may have needed a better editor? There are lot of flubs here, such as an object (I am intentionally omitting what this is) being lost and the later reappearing "magically" (because there is no way anyone could have returned to get it) plus anyone who is writing about people returning from the dead might want to know a little bit more about basic mortuary procedures. In the plus column it does have a thrilling if predictable climax. Three stars.

[Angie Bulkeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russo’s story picks up ten years after the events of NOTLD, and is an enjoyable read. I literally did not put it down once I started reading.

Don’t expect anything film-related, however, as this is his original novel and not the one he wrote which was film-based.

He’s one of the masters of Zombies for a reason.

[Jai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every time I read or watch something involving zombies I learned that the real monsters are the humans. You would think that everyone would come together to stay alive but you truly have folks that use it as a way to just be horrible ass people.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more like Night of the Living Dead (which makes sense, given that it’s by the screenwriter of that) than the film adaptation Return of the Living Dead. Less goofy fun than that flick, but this was a solid little zombie thriller.

[Audrey Coots · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little quick horror story. Aged well!

[Shawn Robare · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating glimpse into a turbulent period in horror. Russo, Romero and company created a film that was a pivot point in modern horror with Night of the Living Dead, and this book, Russo’s follow-up to that film, takes a monumental amount of inspiration from the films that were directly influenced by NOTLD to create a very intense “sequel”. Russo clearly took note of Last House on the Left and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when crafting his sequel novel. He imbues the story with the callus brutality of LHotL and the bleakness of TCM, and then propels the zombie infestation into a very dark story that is the blueprint for modern zombie cinema.

[Ryan Sasek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good but not great sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Still a quick fun read.

[mefi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it way more than "Night of the living dead". There's more action and many different characters.

[Alan Villafana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a perfect true sequel to The Night of the Living Dead. Even though both film franchises split (which both are good), I think we would've enjoyed Russo's sequel in moving form.

[James madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books of all time excellent sequel to original Shame they never did a movie of this

[laurel · Rating 2 out of 5]

ur average basic zombie virus outbreak, but the other humans are the bigger threat

[Noel Thingvall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts off an odd, bland, uninteresting mess. We open with a post-zombie religious organization that doesn't really play into things later on at all, some nice stuff from the Sheriff of the first movie... who again doesn't play all that big of a part later on, and world-building in the decade since the initial outbreak which just isn't that good or interesting. So the Venus satellite really was the cause? And only the coastlines on the oceans it sank into had outbreaks back then instead of being world-wide? And the government cracked down on anybody talking about the event at all so as to create a sense of calm? That last one especially irks me because you know people would be talking about those events endlessly for the following decade, and the only way in which a plot thread like that would be necessary would be if this were 20+ years later and you were dealing with a generational divide of those who lived through a past outbreak and those who haven't. But we don't get that, so alas.

Once the actual story kicks in, it's a pretty bland retread of the film with people trapped in an isolated farmhouse for the night, the twist being that these people are a trio of teen girls whose father just died, and a band of raiders disguised as cops. None of this works because the reader can see through that disguise within a page of their introduction, and none of the female characters are developed beyond being meek fodder to be preyed upon. Hell, the only "strong" woman in the book is a villain, and she's hardly there. She's killed shortly after she appears in a disgusting, rapey attack where a zombie literally rips all her clothes off, then chews into her boobs and between her legs. Really, Russo?

Thankfully, the perspective switches to a pair of State Troopers halfway through, and this is when the book actually picks up some momentum. In an escalation of events from the first film, our heroes leave the farmhouse and have to traverse the countryside at night, dealing with the undead, bandits, posses, gangs of armed feral children (!), homeowners with itchy trigger fingers, and an unexpected newborn baby. There are some genuinely strong setpieces in this half of the book, with much better characterization and a steady string of unexpected plot twists which kept me on my toes right up until the end.

I can't really recommend the book, because it is clumsy and dry, has a boring drag of a first half, and is peppered with the dated sexism Russo is known for, but if you're a fan of zombie movies and the Dead series in general (and this is absolutely an alternative branch off the core Dead series, as opposed to the Return of the Living Dead comedies) and you can force your way through the muck of the first half, I think you'll get some enjoyment and surprises out of what the book eventually becomes. For everyone else, it's not really worth tracking down.

The edition I read was the one included in Undead, a digital omnibus which also includes Russo's Night of the Living Dead novelization. As far as I know, there aren't any difference between this version and earlier printings.