HBS 002 INTERVIEW W/ JOHN RUSSO SCREENWRITER – NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD!

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Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 black-and-white American independent horror film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, and Karl Hardman.

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 was stabbed in the head in Night of the Living Dead, as well as cameos in There's Always Vanilla and House of Frankenstein 1997. John Russo is also the founder and one of the co-mentors along with Russell Steiner of the John Russo Movie Making Program at DuBois Business College in DuBois, Pennsylvania

The film premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a $114,000 budget. The film became a financial success, grossing $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally. Night of the Living Dead was heavily criticized at its release owing to explicit content, but eventually garnered critical acclaim and has been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” The film has entered the public domain due to an error by the distributor.

The story follows characters Ben (Duane Jones), Barbara (Judith O’Dea), and five others trapped in a rural farmhouse in Pennsylvania which is attacked by unnamed “living dead” monsters which later became known in popular culture as zombies. Night of the Living Dead was the basis of five subsequent Living Dead films (1978–2010) also directed by Romero and has inspired remakes.

Plot Summary of the Film Night of the Living Dead:

Barbra (Judith O'Dea) and Johnny Blair (Russell Streiner) drive to rural Pennsylvania for an annual visit to their father's grave. This was their mother's request. Johnny teases, "They're coming to get you, Barbra," noticing Barbra's discomfort. She is then attacked by a strange man (Bill Hinzman). Johnny tries to rescue his sister, but the strange man throws him against a gravestone; Johnny strikes his head on the stone and dies. Barbra flees by car but crashes into a tree. She escapes on foot, with the stranger in pursuit, and later arrives at a farmhouse, where she discovers a woman's mangled corpse. She is confronted by strange menacing figures, running out of the house, like the man in the graveyard. Ben (Duane Jones) takes her into the house. Ben drives the monsters from the house and seals the doors and windows as Barbra slowly descends into shock and insanity.

Ben and Barbra are unaware that the farmhouse has a cellar, housing an angry married couple Harry (Karl Hardman) and Helen Cooper (Marilyn Eastman), along with their daughter Karen (Kyra Schon). They sought refuge after a group of zombies overturned their car. Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley), who are a teenage couple, arrived after hearing an emergency broadcast about a series of brutal murders. Karen has fallen seriously ill after being bitten by one of the zombies. They ventured upstairs when Ben turns on a radio while Barbra awakens from a stupor. Harry demands that everyone hide in the cellar, but Ben deems it a "deathtrap" and continues upstairs, to barricade the house with Tom's help.

Radio reports explained that a wave of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern United States. The emergency broadcaster reports that the recently deceased have become reanimated and are consuming the flesh of the living, from the television Ben, finds. Experts, scientists, and the United States military fail to discover the cause though one scientist suspects radioactive contamination from a space probe. It returned from Venus and deliberately exploded in the Earth's atmospheres when the radiation was detected. The Horror of the film continues as more zombies emerge onto the farmhouse scene.

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