Return of the Living Dead By John Russo

Return of the Living Dead
By John Russo
1979 Hamlyn
Paperback, 176 pages

                           

                This is the true sequel to George Romero’s classic film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Russo had written the novelization for that film in 1974 from his and Romero’s screenplay and this book is adapted from a proposed screenplay by Russo, Russell Streiner, and Rudi Ricci (credited as Ricci Valentine in the book) that never got made. This is not a novelization of Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 zombie comedy Return of the Living Dead, although Russo did eventually write that in 1985. Confused? Don’t be. The film was a comedy and this story is bleak and deadly serious. It carries Night’s grim tone throughout its pages.

 

                Ten years after the original zombie epidemic (which has ended), Bert Miller and his three daughters (one of whom, Karen, is expecting) are heading to a funeral. In this area, it is common to drive a spike into the skull of the deceased, because nobody wants a repeat of the previous decade’s trouble. While there, the mourners learn of a bus crash nearby and Bert takes his daughters with him to retrieve the bodies and spike them in the noggin. When the cops show up, the Millers screw out of there only half done. Guess what happens! Bert barricades the farmhouse but one daughter runs away, leaving the door unlocked and Bert becomes Zombie Chow.

 

                A group of looters (and rapists, we’re reminded of numerous times) show up at the farmhouse and settle in with two tied up prisoners. Dressed as cops, two of them give orders to the daughters but the two bound prisoners are the real cops. The daughters are taken with the gang (except Karen who is in labor) and the cops are left to feed or be fed upon. Who will survive this pickle? Will the kid be born healthy, or at all? Will the looters (and rapists) get their come-uppance? You will read this one with dizzying speed to find out. I am a slow reader and read it in two sittings.

 

                Don’t worry; in that short time, you’ll get everything you want. Flesh eating, corpse bonfires, good ol’ boys having too much fun, and bad guys using the outbreak to their advantage. “Warm human flesh was the only kind that could nourish the living dead.” The story stays in a rural farmland area and, even though it is more spread out than Night, Russo achieves the same claustrophobia. Of course the real danger here is humanity, or lack thereof. The looter (and rapist) gang are more bloodthirsty than the ghouls, proving again that man is the scariest monster.

 

                First released in the US by Dale Books in 1978, I, as always, prefer the first UK edition from Hamlyn because their covers always rule. Two different covers were available, one for Australia, and they’re both great. The green ghoul cover even has a rare photography credit for one Ken Adams, which makes me wonder if he was responsible for all of Hamlyn’s great photo covers. The book has also been reprinted many times, most recently by the reliable Fathom Press. If you’re a fan of Romero’s first foray into zombies, this book will check all of the right boxes for your zombie loving soul.

The Death of the Führer By Roland Puccetti

The Death of the Führer
By Roland Puccetti
1973 Arrow Books
Paperback, 224 pages

                First published in 1972 by St. Martin’s Press (in hardcover!), this book wasn’t on my radar until I saw the magnificent (and spoilery) Arrow paperback cover. Reading a few reviews forced me to find the book (the Arrow edition, of course) and it has changed my life for the better. Another death-bed-bookshelf tome. They saved Hitler’s brain, all right, and had a lot of fun with it!

 

                The story is told by an elderly Karl Gisevius, who had been given private information that Hitler did not commit suicide in his bunker, that the Russians had found his body, but without a brain. So, twenty years after the war ended, in the interest of a spectacular news story, Karl heads to Berlin to get into the bunker and have a look around. Seems reasonable. Miraculously, he does get in and gets a clue as to who might have taken the brain… his old pal/ rival Willi Tränger. Now, to find him.

 

                Cut to the chase. He did. To get into Tränger’s well-guarded castle, Karl has a motorcycle accident, and his old pal recognizes him (this would be many years since they’d last seen each other) and lets him convalesce in the castle. That’s certainly more good luck! There, he meets a crazy cast of characters who refuse to let the Third Reich die, including the hot Baroness. She is so attracted to Karl that they have a romantic rendezvous in her room. While screwing, at the point of their simultaneous orgasm, she screams “Ich ben der Führer!”. And then it starts to get really crazy.

 

                This sci-fi/ horror/ hysterical history novel just keeps chugging along, with Karl performing the most amazing stunts, including self-brain surgery, and he never gets flustered in the least. Puccetti actually made me squirm claustrophobically a few times, like going down the Bunker’s airshaft and climbing the castles’ chimney for espionage reasons but I knew Karl was going to survive. He was telling the story. And telling it in such a matter-of-fact way that it seemed that having his life in danger was a mere inconvenience.

 

                Stupid, hilarious, visionary and actually pretty well-written (except for confusing time-lines), this book is a gem of balls to the wall insanity. This is the kind of pulp novel that only comes along once in a blue moon and you have to grab it, read it and treasure it always. Now go listen to legendary Boston punk band Unnatural Act’s song “They Saved Hitler’s Brain” and thank me later.

    A much needed reprint is forthcoming from the great Fathom Press in 2026.

The Possession of Jessica Young By Russ Martin

The Possession of Jessica Young
By Russ Martin
1982 Tor Books
Paperback, 316 pages

                Russ Martin is back with another Satanic mind-control saga, the first one for Tor Books. Tor picked up the slack from Playboy Press who had just been sold. This one is another male wish-fulfillment fantasy if the male happens to be a total misogynistic asshole weakling.

 

                The book opens with Jessica Young, a whip-smart and beautiful woman, who has broken free from her captors. Among her credentials, she has psychic abilities. The story is told in chapters from “Then” and “Now”, unraveling a sordid tale of sexual abuse, degradation, betrayal, slavery and greed. Jessica’s captor is one Stephen Abbott, a rich, good-looking man who holds a prominent position in The Organization. His boss? It seems to be Old Scratch himself.

 

                Jessica’s escape from Abbott’s clutches are but a bump in the road for The Organization who are looking to steal her powers for the great good of mankind and Satan. Read that as MAN-kind. Abbott and his male cronies own their women. Maids, slaves and sex toys. In order to find the missing Jessica, Abbott seduces her 17-year-old sister Heather to help find her in Los Angeles. Jessica has a cop friend that she has been seeing so she seems safe. But is she?

 

                Jessica is a good character; a smart woman who can easily take care of herself. It is therefore very uncomfortable to watch her be reduced to a family-murdering trophy by Abbott in the “Then” chapters. Admittedly, I cringed quite a lot watching her, and later her sister with her teenage “boyfriend”, getting used and abused. I’m not comfortable with rapey scenes and this book has many.

 

                That said, Martin (whoever he really is) weaves a compelling story throughout, with the flashbacks and current scenes keeping the pages turning, hoping to see Jessica decimate her adversaries. This is a much more uncomfortable narrative than some of his other books with a similar subject matter. The cringe-factor is high, unless you really are a weakling man who needs to see women “put in their place”. It makes you wonder what kind of person Martin was (is?). This appears to be the first in a kind of trilogy that use some of these same characters. On deck is The Obsession of Sally Wing.

Mystery Walk By Robert McCammon

Mystery Walk
By Robert McCammon
1984 Ballantine
Paperback, 419 pages

                            
                                                                                                  Art by Jim Thiesen

                This is another one that I bought way back when it first came out and never got around to reading. That’s fine because if this had been my first McCammon, I might not have gone on and read any other books by him. Not that this one is bad, it’s just not very satisfying to me for a lot of reasons. One reason is not the writing. McCammon is an excellent writer, even when the story isn’t super engaging. That’s how I was able to finish this behemoth of a paperback.

 

                Hawthorn, Alabama is where John and Ramona Creekmore and their 10-year old son Billy live. Ramona is one quarter Choctaw and has the ability to not only sense someone’s impending death (a black aura surrounds them) but she can take on the pain of wandering spirits and put them to rest. Of course, in racist Alabama in 1962, this makes her the Hawthorn Witch and she is ostracized by the community. Now, Billy is showing signs of having similar extraordinary abilities and churchgoing John and the local shitheads are mad that there are two of them. At a tent revival in town, with charlatan J. J. Falconer and his son Wayne (who is a faith healer), the Mother and Son cause a real scene and are forced to leave.

 

                The story follows Billy as well as Wayne, two kids of the same age, both seeming to have special abilities. It follows them to their teens and high school, up through their late teens and into their early twenties. It is a good versus evil thing going on but Billy, despite being unchristian, is not the evil one. The Falconers have been all about the money all along, being the crooked Evangelicals that they are. Once both boys are fatherless, their true emotional boundaries are revealed and they hitch up with very different groups of people who “help” them on their way through their personal Mystery Walks.

 

                It is an epic tale, for sure. Unfortunately, it reads as though McCammon thought up the next part each time he got to it, stringing together a bunch of different ideas and scenarios with the characters playing along. I guess it all fits by the end but there’s so much extraneous exposition that I was getting fidgety. The typeface is small and dense (41 lines per page) and the book just went on and on. I stayed with it thanks to McCammon’s excellent writing style but the story meandered and the characters, even though the story is about the boys’ personal growth, never really develop. Incredible things get accepted too rapidly and, well… it made me sigh a lot, wishing I was finished.

 

                This was McCammon’s first book to be published in paperback, the Ballantine book coming out a year after its hardcover from Holt. The first edition Ballantine cover pretty much sucks but later printings had a nice crawling corpse cover by Jim Thiesen.

Legend of the Werewolf By Robert Black

Legend of the Werewolf
By Robert Black
Based on a screenplay by John Elder
1976 Sphere Books
Paperback, 158 pages

                                                 

                As a Peter Cushing fanatic, I have long been a fan of Tyburn Studio’s Legend of the Werewolf (1975). I am the proud owner of the kick-ass one sheet poster and as I wait for Tyburn’s Kevin Francis to become less insane about licensing the title for Blu Ray release, I wanted to revisit the story via the novelization. While Les Edwards’ amazing cover is enough to make me open my wallet, I wondered if Robert Black’s (Robert Holdstock, 1948-2009) adaptation of John Elder’s (Anthony Hinds, 1922-2013) screenplay would do the film justice. I need not have worried. Even though “Elder’s” name isn’t on the cover or title page, “Black” follows the script to a T and does so with excellent, descriptive and often eloquent prose.

 

                If you’ve seen the film (and you should seek it out if you haven’t), you know the plot. Etoile is a young man who was raised by wolves who joins a traveling circus and then winds up in Paris. He finds work with crusty old Duvic, a sleazy zookeeper who gives Etoile a place to live and a tiny bit of money for his services. While there, Etoile meets Christine and becomes smitten, not knowing she’s a prostitute. When he does discover her line of work, the men who see her wind up shredded. Morgue doctor Cataflanque (the Cushing character) starts looking into what is making Christine’s clients become his clients despite the police’s warnings to back off the case. Meanwhile, Etoile is obviously conflicted for many reasons, as is Christine.

 

                As noted, the novel follows the script quite closely, but Black fills in a lot of background detail and employs many colorful descriptions to make this much more than a carbon copy. Cataflanque’s detective work is very exciting despite the reader knowing a werewolf is at large. The scenes in the bordello are perfectly elegant and sleazy and provide a welcome sense of humor while Cataflanque investigates. It was easy to read that character as played by Cushing and that made my experience with the book that much better. The written gore is plentiful and the suspenseful ending is a rip-roaring good time. This is one novelization that gets it just right and I recommend it howlingly!

 

                Now, Mr. Francis… don’t be a putz. Get this film out on home media soon. My creaky old VHS tape wants to retire.

                                   

                                                            My one-sheet from the film.

Moonbog By Rick Hautala

Moonbog
By Rick Hautala
1982 Zebra
Paperback, 410 pages

 

                Rick Hautala (1949-2013) was one of the more ubiquitous names on the Zebra roster in the 1980s, but this is the first time I settled down to read his work. No question about it; he is a very good writer, and he tells a compelling story. He manages to go from a setting like a Pepperidge Farm commercial to a violent rape/ murder without really changing tone. Not easy to do, but does that make this a great novel?

 

                New York yuppie David Logan goes back to his hometown of Holland, Maine to settle his family’s estate. He brings along his ever-complaining girlfriend Allison and leaves her in the motel room while he revisits his past. Chief among his memories is the Bog, a huge, dangerous swamp that always had scary stories and tall tales told about it in his youth. It looks no more friendly to him as an adult. Especially when he finds a mutilated dead kid in there with his pecker cut off.

 

                The bog had been blamed for a few missing kids the year before, as well. Then more kids go missing and search parties scour the bog. It seems that Holland has a child killer who is sexually assaulting his victims as well. Can the old sheriff find the perpetrator? Can David be of any help or is he a suspect? David’s Uncle Marshall sure is an odd duck. We, the reader, learn halfway through who is responsible and only then does the real cat and mouse game begin.

 

                The book does feel a bit padded to me, with characters and situations that really add nothing when all is said and done, but I guess that’s fine while trying to keep the secret of the killer’s identity. And I’m sure that having all of the town’s kids have cutesy “ee” names (Bobby, Sammy, Jeffy, Robbie, etc.) is to add to the horror of the brutality when it appears. From loving family values and treacly small-town values to disharmony to violent assault, torture and murder, Hautala manages to keep you from getting whiplash with his deft writing skills.

 

                True to form, Zebra’s cover art and back cover blurb have nothing to do with the actual story inside. If you think you’re getting a supernatural Bog Beast, you are wrong, but that shouldn’t reflect on your opinion of the book. Moonbog goes by quickly and is a satisfying read even if you can’t stand any of the characters and the children’s dialog makes you ill. My first impression of Hautala is not entirely horrible.

The Nameless By Ramsey Campbell

The Nameless
By Ramsey Campbell
1985 Tor Books (Macmillan, 1981)
Paperback, 312 pages

                Man, Ramsey Campbell can sure write a pretty book. His descriptions and similes are second to none. “Cigarette butts snaggletoothed the ashtray.” “The sky was the color of steam.” Everything is so easy to picture and the words flow beautifully. That, of course, makes it a slow read for me as I go back and admire the wordsmithing. Campbell is a master. This is the first full length novel of his that I have read. Would his florid style be too much over 300 pages? Hell no.

 

                Barbara Waugh is a literary agent whose husband died before their daughter Angela was born. Angela was kidnapped and murdered when she was four years old. Now, nine years later, Barbara gets a phone call from a young girl, calling her Mummy and asking her to come and get her. This, of course, sounds impossible but the calls persist and Barbara is convinced that her daughter is not dead. This opens up a lot of searching for answers that might be very hard to find.

 

                Her searches lead her into many seedy, dusty, abandoned buildings and meeting many different strangers who may or may not be able to help. It seems a nameless cult (that even the Manson Family thought were too crazy) might have taken Angela to tap into her possible psychic power. (Angela could be heard talking to her late father on the baby monitor in the past.) People who try to help Barbara out always seem to wind up dead. She scours the United Kingdom, searching with the slimmest of clues, but her lover seems to have found an address where the cult, and Angela, might be.

 

                There are a few harrowing scenes where Barbara’s helpers are caught in a hell-like situation. Margery, another mother who lost her kid to the cult, explores a dark, dusty, abandoned house in a chapter that had me squirming, just knowing something could grab her at any moment. Gerry is an investigative reporter who infiltrates the cult and has a nail-biting walk through the darkened building where sleeping cult members could bust her at any moment. Campbell really knows how to ratchet up the suspense, raise your blood pressure and make you uncomfortable, albeit with gorgeous prose.

 

                The chill factor stays high right up to the end, though I must admit that the ending was a bit of a letdown. Even Campbell has admitted that it feels forced, but that in no way will take away from my high recommendation of this book. I felt a lot of compassion for Barbara and was in her corner the whole way. The Nameless was first published by Macmillan in 1981. It was made into a movie in 1999 by Spaniard Jaume Balagueró, entitled Los Sin Nombre and remade as a six-part miniseries in Spain in 2025. The handsome Tor cover features a flaming Angela painted by an uncredited artist.