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"You're not from around here, Greene," Sheriff McClellan said. "This area was one of the hardest hit ten years ago. Remember? The dead had to be burned or decapitated. The brain had to be destroyed. I don't know if those creatures were really dead or not -- not in the usual sense. Nobody knows. But somebody is afraid it's going to happen again."

Greene blanched. "It can't happen again..."

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But one can still read Russo’s original treatment -- if you can get your hands on a certain elusive paperback. You see Russo converted the script -- co-written with Image Ten collaborators Russell Streiner and Ricci Valentine -- into the novel Return of the Living Dead for Dale Books.

First published in 1978, Russo's story opens in rural Pennsylvania at the funeral of a young girl. After finishing the ceremony, the preacher then nods to the girl’s father, who then solemnly takes up a hammer and spike and drives it into the deceased’s skull. When word comes that a bus has crashed close by, killing everyone on board, fearful that the dead will rise again -- like they did ten years before, the congregation manages to spike most of the victims in the head, but the authorities arrive before they can finish the job.

Return of the Living Dead has a great beginning, where Russo establishes a creepy atmosphere that just drips with tension and anxiety, but, unfortunately, quickly loses all momentum once the dead arise. Any novelty the narrative had is quickly abandoned to rehash the hole-up and siege motif of Night of the Living Dead. Here, the zombies are just a nuisance, almost an afterthought, as the main conflict is between the looters and the cops, who are fighting over the Miller sisters. And Russo seems a little preoccupied with getting those sisters naked -- alive or dead:

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"The ghoul knelt over the unconscious girl, its dead lips drooling spittle. With a glint of lust in its eyes, it bit into the soft flesh of her neck and lingered there. Then its rough hands moved down, and pulled her blouse off her body in one brutal motion. The ghoul bent its head and sunk its teeth into the girl's firm breasts, chewing bits out of one and then the other. All the while groans came from deep within its throat and the ghoul's body moved rhythmically ... more determined than before, it ripped off the rest of her clothing and relished in the soft pulpiness of her thigh and groin until it had chewed its fill."

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See what I mean?

The book does recover when it’s being original in spots, and contains several truly macabre scenes of the looters baiting the zombies with hostages so they can get away. It also has an ambiguous ending concerning Karen’s baby that will either anger you or send chills down your spine.

Tracking down a copy of this novel isn’t easy and it took me several years to secure one through eBay. And you have to be really careful, too, because Russo also did the novelization for O’Bannon’s film. As they have the exact same name, that will cause you even more confusion and consternation -- and don’t get burnt and purchase the film adaptation by mistake, like I did, for way too much money by an unscrupulous eBay seller who insisted it was an original. Over the years, Russo's novel has gone through three different printings -- the last one in 1996, but it’s still very rare. The original price was a mere $1.99 but expect to pay at least $35-$50 for a copy today.