By John Russo
Based on the screenplay by George Romero and John Russo
1974 Warner
Paperback, 191 pages
I remember seeing this book
listed in the back of Famous Monsters and The Monster Times and
lusting after it but I never nabbed a copy until 1981 when I found the Pocket
Books reprint at Gary Drug on Charles Street in Boston. Unfortunately, it had
the less effective shiny silver cover, not the grabbing hands. I still have
that book but I never read it. I recently found the original 1974 Warner book
at a reasonable price and acquired it and finally read it. Now, I’m not going
to go into the plot because everybody has seen the film dozens of times and
know it by heart. I will, however,
mention a few things about the novelization that I liked and some that I
was disappointed by.
First off, Russo gets to add plenty of things to flesh out
some characters. Ben has two kids, for instance, making his quest for survival
that much more tense. In the opening graveyard scene, the ghoul eats Johnny’s
face. I like that. There is a lot more action from Sherriff McClellan and his
posse, which is great because he is a highlight of the film. Sadly, Russo
didn’t include any of George Kosana’s improvs from the film as they are some of
my favorite lines (“Beat ‘em or burn ‘em, they go up pretty easy.” “Yeah,
they’re dead, they’re… all messed up.”). He seemed to be working pretty
much from the script and that produced some inferior results in some instances.
The main thing that bothered me was Ben’s dialog. In the
script phase, they had no idea that they’d land
such an intelligent and refined actor as Duane Jones, so the Ben
character is a bit rough around the edges, saying “I ain’t going to hurt
you.” and “They ain’t that strong.“ which made me bristle a bit. It
was hard picturing Duane Jones speaking like that. Also, Judy, who wasn’t in
the original script, is glossed over, not even getting the lines she gets in
the film.
It is a fun read, for sure, with plenty of gore
(decapitations are a must in the book) and action but this has been a favorite
film for most of my life and, like so many horror fans, I know almost every
line and every camera set-up by heart. Is there really a need to read
this? No, not really and in the end, it really just made me want revisit the
movie again. So I did. It is perfection.
Incidentally, there are credits for the Warner cover. Cover
design by Gene Light and cover photo by Paul Weller. (Must have been a
photographer before forming The Jam! I kid, I kid!) There are 16 pages of
photos from the film, as well.
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