As co-writer of the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, John A Russo is quite rightly proud of how this low budget movie from Pittsburgh became a phenomenon. With Criterion releasing a remastered Blu-ray edition of the movie, John spoke to Nick Joy about saving the negative from the sheriff, the restoration process, novelising the screenplay and being set on fire.

 

Hi John, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I’ve just had the pleasure of watching Criterion’s new 4K restoration and it looks beautiful. How did it feel for you seeing the final version?

We are very pleased with the entire job that Criterion did, as far as presentation, commentary tracks, artwork, etc. They do a first-class job. The restoration itself was done by the Museum of Modern Art. However, Criterion is known far and wide as the finest distributor of the Blu-ray format.

You’re credited as supervising the restoration, alongside George A Romero, Russ and Gary Streiner – what does that process entail?

Russ Streiner and I took excellent care of the original negatives and other cinematic materials over a 50-year period. In 2005 all of it was almost locked up and potentially destroyed when a sheriff came to lock up the Pittsburgh laboratory where the elements were stored, because the lab was bankrupt.  Luckily, I was warned, hired a truck and arrived just in time with some of my filmmaking students to save the movie from a dire fate. Russ, Gary and I drove to the restoration facility with all the original materials, and were pleased and greatly relieved when they were pronounced to be “in excellent condition” by the negative examiners. Other than that, I did not sit through the further processes, but George Romero did, so he got to see the result before he unfortunately passed away.

For me it feels like a new film – it’s so clear. Is this now the definitive version?

This is absolutely the definitive version right now and probably far into the future.

Can you recall the first public screening of the movie? I feel it can still shock modern audiences now as it did then.

Russ Streiner and I handled all the details of the World Premiere in 1968. It was on October first, and then the next day the movie opened in about 17 theaters in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a huge hit right from the start. The theater chain had to take out ads apologizing for having to turn away customers at the drive-ins because they could not fit them all in. This had never happened before.  Russ and I had decided to go all-out with the premiere, including Klieg lights, red carpets and limousines, and not to apologize in any way because it happened to be a low-budget horror film. We had a spectacular cocktail party after the screening at a first-class hotel.  I’ll never forget this very special event.

You are correct that it still shocks and captivates audiences, even young audiences to this day.  Sometimes teenagers think they don’t really want to see a black-and-white movie, but within a few opening minutes they’re hooked just as strongly as audiences of the late sixties were.  The “undying” power that the movie holds is an amazing phenomenon.

At what point did you accept that you had made a classic movie? Was there any sense during production that you were making something very special?

We wholeheartedly believed that we were making a good movie, and we were solidly behind George Romero as the director. We were a tight-knit production unit and everybody “wore many hats” and knew exactly what needed to be done without being told, and we all put out a superhuman effort. But no one could predict the phenomenon that the movie has become. That being said, we have grown quite accepting of that fact over the years because the accolades, the huge number of fans of all ages, and the continuing power of the movie has become undeniable.

You actually appeared in the movie as a ghoul that gets stabbed in the head. Was that a necessity because you could save on actor’s fees, or were you really keen to get in front of the camera?

I’ve seldom been keen to get in front of any camera because working behind the camera as a cameraman, director, producer or in any other capacity is quite demanding enough for me. I have done cameos in some of my movies when I’ve had to – usually because I had no one else to do it. That’s what happened on NOLD.  We were shooting at three in the morning when everyone, all the potential extras, had gone home. Later, I volunteered to be set on fire in the Molotov cocktail sequence – with real gasoline! We didn’t have a stunt man or an asbestos suit, and I thought we would look stupid if none of those creatures with dry, dead flesh caught on fire. We got three takes, and they are all in the movie.

The gore, the downbeat ending, the strong African American lead actor – the movie was significant in so many ways, and trailblazing 50 years of zombie movies. It’s a great legacy.

Thank you for your kind comments. We take pride that we, in our small way, were able to help break some ground for all the wonderfully talented African-American actors to follow.

You’ve subsequently novelised the movie. Did you take the opportunity to add anything that the original movie’s budget couldn’t afford, or was edited out?

I didn’t add all that much to the overall story, but of course I fleshed it out in novel format.  I probably should have added more, but at that time novelizations were expected to conform pretty much to what was actually in the movie. However, nowadays they have gotten much more expansive.

For the 30th Anniversary edition of the movie you took out footage and added 15 minutes. Is that cut closer to what you originally wanted?

Well, I added some scenes to show more explicitly where all these zombies could have come from to arrive at this out-of-the-way farmhouse and surround it in such numbers.  For instance, I depicted the aftermath of a car accident where some people were killed and became zombies. And I added characters – a Beekman’s diner “zombified” waitress and so on – to show that the diner must have been close by, where patrons had been turned into the undead. These are things we probably would have done originally if we could have afforded them in terms of time and money.

Finally, I was intrigued to read about My Uncle John is a Zombie and wondered if you could tell me something about it?

I am very happy with this movie, which I wrote and then directed with Rob Lucas, who produced the very good documentary, One for the Fire. We are playing at festivals and in limited theatrical engagements right now, and critics and audiences are loving it. For the first time, I play the lead role. One critic said, “If Citizen Kane and Shaun of the Dead had a baby it would be My Uncle John is a Zombie.” For plenty of exciting information, including a trailer, photos and merchandise ads, please check it out at: myunclejohnisazombie.com.

 We’ll do just that! Thank you for your time.

Night of the Living Dead is available now with a 4k restoration from The Criterion Collection 

Thanks to Michael Hammond and Sarah Holland at DNA-PR for their help in arranging this interview