Cody reads of the living dead and supernatural vengeance.
RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD by John Russo
When I would watch George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead as a kid, I always assumed the authorities and volunteer civilians who were gunning down the living dead at the end of the film were getting the zombie outbreak that had hit the eastern-third of the United States under control. I was a fan of that movie for years before I heard that Romero had made two sequels – Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead – that weren’t available at any of my local video stores. From the moment I learned of their existence, I had to wait two more years until I came across VHS copies of Dawn and Day... and when I watched them, I discovered that Romero had a much less positive outlook on the zombie outbreak than I did. As his sequels showed, the authorities were never able to get the living dead problem under control and society crumbled completely.
But Romero and his Night co-writer John Russo had come to the agreement that, while Romero made his Dead movies, Russo would also be allowed to continue the story of Night with his own Living Dead projects. The first of those was the novel Return of the Living Dead, which was published in 1978, the same year Romero unleashed Dawn of the Dead – and from Russo’s perspective, my childhood assumption that everything was going to be taken care of was correct. Return tells us that the zombie outbreak of ‘68 was dealt with, and the dead have been staying dead ever since. Now ten years have passed. Most people are trying to forget what happened a decade earlier, but there are some groups, like a church congregation led by a fellow called Reverend Michaels, who believe that the dead need extra reason to stay dead. So everyone associated with this church drives a spike into the head of their loved ones when they pass away. And when this congregation learns that several people have been killed in a bus crash near the church, they even head out to spike the corpses before the authorities arrive. Because the police frown on such behavior.
Return takes place in the same general area as Night did, so it features the return of Sheriff Conan McClellan, who was featured in the ‘68 film as the leader of the group blasting down zombies while making their way across the countryside. Now McClellan is just dealing with regular crimes... but pretty soon he’ll have more zombies to handle. When the dead rose in ‘68, some suspected it was caused by radiation from a probe that crash-landed on its way back from Venus. When the dead start rising again ten years later, Russo doesn’t attempt to give any sort of explanation. It just starts happening all over again. The first scenes of the dead rising again are handled in a very creepy way, taking place in a funeral home and a morgue.
Then Russo had to face the challenge of making sure the story of Return wouldn’t just be Night all over again – and how to make the situation difficult for the characters, since now we know that zombie outbreaks are a problem that can be solved in a day or so. The zombies do chow down on plenty of people as the book plays out, but they’re not always the biggest threat to the characters. The outbreak in this book is said to be worse than the previous one not because of the dead, but because people are taking advantage of the situation, heading out to commit crimes while the dead disrupt the peace. Scavengers, murderers, and rapists hit the streets, moving among the dead, victimizing their neighbors.
At the center of the story are a farmer’s three daughters, Ann, Sue Ellen, and Karen Miller. When we meet them, the biggest issue in their lives is the fact that Karen has gotten pregnant out of wedlock, but then the dead start rising. A portion of the book takes place in the boarded-up Miller home, where the Millers are quickly joined by four questionable characters: a guy who claims to be a State Trooper, his partner, and two civilians. This group enters the house with two bound and gagged captives. Soon we learn that the two captives are the real State Troopers, while their captors are a group of people just stopping by the Miller place on their way to pull off a heist at a rich family’s mansion. We’re deep into the book by the time the captive State Troopers get loose and one of them, named Dave, becomes the lead. It’s kind of odd that Russo chose to wait so long before focusing on this character.
There are some interesting sequences in Return of the Living Dead, and if you’re a fan of Night of the Living Dead you’ll probably enjoy reading about this similar zombie outbreak. It’s easy to imagine this becoming a movie that plays out very much like what’s on the page. I could see the low budget, late ‘70s or early ‘80s production in my mind as I went through the book – and I wish it really had been turned into a movie, with George Kosana back in the role of Sheriff Conan McClellan. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near the level of Dawn of the Dead, but it’d still be a lot of fun to see.
Of course, Russo did eventually make a deal to bring Return of the Living Dead to the screen, but director Dan O’Bannon ended up taking that adaptation in a very different direction. That worked out for Russo, because not only did he get paid for the selling the story, but he also got to write a novelization of the movie that’s completely different from the Return of the Living Dead he originally wrote. I’ll be checking out that novelization very soon. It’s worth noting that some elements Russo introduced in this book did make it to the screen a couple decades down the line, in the new footage shot for the controversial 30th anniversary version of Night of the Living Dead.
TOTENTANZ by Al Sarrantonio
Totentanz is a book I probably never would have heard of if not for the Secondhand Horror series on the Captain Sassy Media YouTube channel. There, host Diandra Lazor picked up a copy of Totentanz in a used books store and proceeded to record an audiobook of the entire text. I started off listening to that audiobook, but found Totentanz to be so frustrating that I took a step that many might find strange: since I can read faster than an audiobook narrator can speak the words to me, I acquired Totentanz myself so I could speed read through the thing and get it over with.
The story involves a Civil War soldier who returned home to find that his father had been murdered and their family land stolen. The soldier is executed so the criminals can keep his land without any trouble. Then a mysterious, evil being called Ash resurrects him so he can seek his revenge on the town – revenge that’s carried out a hundred years after his death and involves a carnival being set up on the property that formerly belonged to his family. As soon as the carnival starts playing calliope music, nearly everyone in the town falls under a trance and Ash starts picking them off in supernatural ways. The only person in town who’s immune to this supernatural head trip is a young boy named Reggie, who once nearly died but was revived.
There are some interesting ideas in this book, but the way Al Sarrantonio wrote it keeps those ideas from meeting their full potential. The way he writes the characters and presents their stories makes it difficult to connect with them or care about them. Even when a character is interesting, he fumbled their scenes and left me underwhelmed. Most of the chapters are from the perspectives of people who are under the influence of Ash, so you get hallucinations wrapped in memories wrapped in more hallucination.
I found going through this book to be a maddening experience.
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