Produced by Jimmy Miller of Mosaic Media Group, a native of Castle Shannon, PA and the brother of comedian Dennis Miller, She’s Out of My League was shot all over the city, mostly at the airport as lead character Kirk Kettner (Jay Baruchel) is a TSA agent. It also has scenes filmed at The Warhol, on Mount Washington and in Pluma’s in Irwin, PNC Park, Market Square and the now closed Century III Mall.

Kirk is lost without Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), his unfaithful ex-girlfriend, and is barely making it through life. He’s also the only TSA agent that doesn’t creep out party planner Molly McCleish (Alice Eve) when she goes through his security check-point. She leaves her phone, he finds it and that’s how they meet cute.

Everyone is against the relationship, as Kirk’s friend Wendell (T.J. Miller) states that she’s a ten and he’s a five, while her friend Patty (Krysten Ritter) thinks that she’s afraid of getting her heart broken again so she’s picked a safe man. The relationship seems doomed and the typical teen sex comedy hijinks nearly derail things, but of course it all works out.

As for that restaurant that Kirk and Molly eat at in Market Square, it’s a fake set.

Man, Tubi is filled with the work of John Russo, including these two docs:

Monster Make-Ups With Dick Smith (1989): Dick Smith is the godfather of monster make-up and best known for his work on Little Big Man, The Godfather, The Exorcist, House of Dark Shadows, Taxi Driver, Scanners and Death Becomes Her. He was an early pioneer of combining make-up with on-set “practical” special effects to make movie magic. This video, however, is just him doing simple make-up on a willing subject, giving him vampire fangs and then going absolutely wild and making him into a monster. While Smith’s work is dynamic, he’s soft-spoken and this video will show you technique but if you’re watching it as entertainment, you won’t get much. That said, it’s intriguing for horror movie fans. You can watch this on Tubi.

Horror Effects with Tom Savini (2008): Not released until 2008 but probably shot sometime in the 90s, this is less learning the techniques of Savini and more he and John Russo taking a trip down memory lane, talking about the movies they had worked on together and new films that Savini is just starting on like Two Evil Eyes, so yeah, this was around 1990 or so.

When it was shot, this would be the only way that you could see Heartstopper and I’m so glad they left the scene in where Tom keeps doing sets in his home gym while his wife begs him to put a baby in her.

This was directed by Paul McCollough, who shot The Winners, There’s Always Vanilla, The Booby Hatch, FleshEater and Midnight, as well as edited The Booby Hatch, FleshEater, Midnight, The Majorettes and Heartstopper. He also composed the music for remake of Night of the Living Dead, Legion of the Night and Santa Claws.

Russo is a total carny and you know, I kind of love that. I’ve given him money for posters covered in coffee stains and don’t feel bad at all about it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Some of this film feels like home movies from a zombie convention at the Pittsburgh Expo Mart, which used to be right across the parking lot from Monroeville Mall, home of Dawn of the Dead. It also goes into the history of the filmmakers who made Night of the Living Dead, showing commercials for Calgon, Iron City and the Magic Lantern, a device that helps you light your grill faster which is a major deal for Steel City summers.

The convention — I was there, look for a chubby long haired 21-year-old me looking hapless — also had Adam West, Kane Hodder, David Prowse and Gunnar Hansen, as well as people who actually had things to do with Romero’s zombie movies like “Chilly” Billy Cardille and his daughter Lori, who was the star of Day of the Dead.

This also feels like an informerical for things you can’t buy any longer from Russo’s Imagine Inc.There was their new magazine, Scream Queens Illustrated, trading cards and the Scream Queens Swimsuit Sensations video. There’s a near home movie scene of Brinke Stevens arriving and man, while so many actresses seem unapproacable and like androids, Brinke always seem so cute and fun and normal and melts my heart.

Overall, this is like visiting John Russo’s house and him pulling out footage to show you, like “Have you seen the trailer for The Majorettes?” and “Do you like Midnight?”

Definitely when Savini is doing the tour of the mall, well, I am there. He talked about falling on a stunt and his legs being hurt for weeks, as well as the old fountain that was once in the mall.

The quality of this is so bad that it made me wistful for the time of watching camcorder shot footage that just looks like a grainy blur. The fact that people would watch this looking for insights into film and just get footage of Romero hangers on riding the Gateway Clipper makes me deliriously happy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on April 12, 2022 and you can now buy it on blu ray from Terror Vision. It’s also a combination Pittsburgh Made/holiday movie!

John Russo lives in Glassport, which I can see from my house, and he wrote the idea that became Night of the Living Dead, which would probably be enough, but he also helped make Return of the Living Dead happen. And he also made Midnight and The Majorettes, two movies that fall into that strange genre that can only come from Pittsburgh, the yinzer giallo. He also was the publisher and managing editor of Scream Queens Illustrated, which figures into this movie.

Raven Quinn (Debbie Rochon) used to be a scream queen but ever since she had two children with a scream queen magazine publisher who would rather take nude photos of models than work on his marriage. Luckily, she has Wayne (Grant Cramer), a neighbor who once watched his mommy do more than kiss Santa Claus, lost his mind and killed them both. So perhaps she is not quite so fortunate.

Beyond getting to see Night stars like Marilyn Eastman, who played Helen Cooper, Karl Hardman, who played her husband Harry, and first zombie — and the director of The Majorettes and FleshEater — S. William Hinzman, you can pretty much see this as an American Night Killer. They’re both set at Christmas, they both deal with broken marriages and they’re both absolutely berserk movies seemingly made by maniacs.

Waste not, want not, as Russo edited this into Scream Queens Naked Christmas.

Yinzer bonus: Numerous scenes of characters wandering Market Square before anyone went there, back when George Aiken was still making the best-fried chicken ever, when National Record Mart still had that huge store and G.W. Murphy’s was still open. I mean, the killer runs into the Oyster House for a second and I was awash with 90s dahntahn memories, like Honus Wagner, the smell of Hare Krishna’s t-shirts, Candyrama and so much more.

In short, a killer that uses a garden cultivator as a weapon, like a total South Hills Blood and Black Lace, all with softcore dancing that makes me wistful for dollar pizza at Anthony’s and the old sign that was painted on the wall at the Cricket and hey, John Russo wrote two songs for this, “Christmas by Myself” and “Brand New Christmas.”

If you remember that old store Novelties in Market Square that never seemed to sell anything and was put out of business for a Dunkin’ Donuts, well, I want you to know that this movie has the killer buy his Santa Claus suit in that very store.

Welcome to the yinzer giallo list, Santa Claws. Meet us under the Kaufmann’s clock for your framed certificate.

Not only was this film shot in Beaver, PA, it stars Michael Keaton, who was born in Kennedy Township and grew up in McKees Rocks, Coraopolis and Robinson Township and went to high school at Montour. His first acting work was on public station WQED and he played one of the Flying Zookeeni Brothers on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, where he was also a production assistant. How big of a yinzer is he? He negotiated a break during the filming of Batman in case the Pittsburgh Pirates made the playoffs that year.

Of course, they didn’t.

While the movie is set in Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, the factory was in Shadyside, Ohio and the town itself is the aforementioned Beaver, a town minutes from where I grew up. It was a big deal for the town that they donated a gazeebo and it’s still there.

Keaton plays Hunt Stevenson, who has traveled to the Japanese offices of Assan Motors Corporation to convince them to reopen the closed plant in his hometown. They agree and send Takahara “Kaz” Kazuhiro (Gedde Watanabe) to run it in the Japanese style, which conflicts with the blue collar workforce played by George Wendt, John Turturro, Rick Oberton and Clint Howard (Ron directed and got him and their father roles, but he’s as always awesome in this; Howard, Keaton and writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel had all worked on Night Shift together).

You can see the conflict coming. Stevenson wants to please everyone and ends up nearly costing the town everything — Rance Howard plays the mayor who has a breakdown and tells the entire assembled townsfolk that much — while losing the respect of his friends and almost causing his girlfriend Audrey (Mimi Rodgers) to finally dump him.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Toyota’s executives in Japan have used this movie as an example of how not to manage Americans.

Pittsburgh — well, Coraopolis — born Bill Hinzman is probably most famous for being the first zombie that shows up to attack Johnny and Barbara in Night of the Living Dead. His film career has him show up in some other Romero films — he’s a drunk in There’s Always Vanilla, the burglar in Season of the Witch, a crazie in The Crazies, an archer in Knightriders — as well as the zombie movie Legion of the Night, John Russo’s Santa Claws and appearing in and directing the Russo-written The Majorettes.

He also worked behind the camera, serving as the director of photography for The Crazies and cinematographer for The Amusement Park, Drive-In Madness!, Santa Claws and working on the cash-in Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition.

Yet he’d always be that zombie, even showing up in a TV commercial for Goodfellows Brick Oven Pizza as that character. So twenty years after the first time he crawled out of a grave, Hinzman directed, wrote, produced and edited this film which as goes by the names Zombie Nosh and Revenge of the Living Zombies.

I always got the feeling that Hinzman and Russo made these movies to get out of the house, maybe make a little bit of money and maybe either see naked young women or get to bite them as a zombie, in Hinzman’s case.

Actually, what’s funny is that Bill’s wife Bonnie and his daughter Heidi didn’t just let him out of the house, they were involved in the film, appear in it and it’s still filled with this much sleaze! I mean, he even bites his own daughter and she turns into a zombie wearing an angel costume.

This is seriously even more Western Pennsylvania feeling than Romero’s films, a movie that has so much flannel, a hayride at the center of the storyline, people gathering at farms, furtive sex in the woods, big hair and bare breasts at the same time, a cast of twentysomething teenage characters who are all petty lame and die just as fast as you want them to and a farm that has a grave with a sign that literally says don’t break the seal and dumb kids drunk enough to do it and see what happens because nothing ever happens here anyway.

If you’re the kind of person that knows that the title of this comes from the original name for the 1968 classic — Night of the Flesheaters — or if you’re from Western Pennsylvania or even better, you’re excited that Vincent D. Survinski plays the same role he did in Night, this movie is for you. It’s beyond low budget, with real animal guts — Hinzman bit into a pig heart thinking it was a prop — and actual real human heart. The first time I saw it, I thought it was the dumbest movie I’d ever seen and while I probably wasn’t wrong, I have a place in my own heart for it.

You can get it from Vinegar Syndrome or watch it on Tubi.

Director and writer Rob Kuhns does a great job in this of not only explaining why Night of the Living Dead is so important, but getting fans like Larry Fessenden — who executive produced — to tell why the film is so beloved. Of course George Romero shows up — John Russo declined, so they say — as well as film critics Elvis Mitchell, Jason Zinoman and Mark Harris, as well as industry heavyweight Gale Anne Hurd and Bill Hinzman, the first zombie from Night, as he takes part in a zombie walk.

You probably have heard every story and seen every doc there is on the film that began modern horror as well as gave Pittsburgh its title as the zombie capitol of the world. That said, this has some nice animation and the story directly from the main creator. Maybe there’s even something in here you haven’t seen. I mean, there’s a teacher who shows the film to his kids and explains zombie physics to them as well as some of the children who saw this on a matinee — the same old Roger Ebert wrote about — and gets them to tell how they grew up after seeing zombies chow down on those doomed and barbecued folks back in Evans City.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tom Atkins is loved everywhere but in Pittsburgh, we’ve been so lucky to not only have him as a native son, but to have him appear in a one-man show about the life of Pittsburgh Steelers’ founder and owner Art Rooney. The first president of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1933 to 1974 and the first chairman of the team from 1933 to 1988, Rooney led the kind of life people wrote hard scrabble novels about, rising from the North Side streets, the father of a saloon owner and the second of nine children.

A multi-sport athlete, Rooney was a success in boxing, winning the AAU welterweight belt and trying out for the 1920 Olympic Team, as well as playing minor league baseball and semi-pro football, finally buying the “Hope Harvey” and “Majestic Radio” teams and renaming them the J.P. Rooneys when he bought them as an NFL franchise in 1933. As this story will tell you, a smart racetrack bet won him the money he needed to keep the team.

The Steelers weren’t a success until many years after Rooney bought the team. In those years, he was better known for his skill as an owner and also helping the city of Pittsburgh, helping to start the Penguins, financially supporting the Homestead Grays and owning several tracks.

Tom Foerster, a famous Pittsburgh politician, said of Rooney: “Everyone knew Mr. Rooney was our number one citizen…he did more for this city than R.K. Mellon did for the business community and David Lawrence and any of the mayors who followed him, including Richard Caliguiri, did politically.”

After decades of wanting to be a winning team, Rooney was able to do what some saw as impossible: making the Steelers into a winning team. It was finding the right players. It was hiring coach Chuck Noll. While the Steelers are rebuilding now — this happens, it always does — in my childhood I was blessed to see the team win the 1975, 1978 and 1979 Super Bowls. But most importantly, while “The Chief” was alive, the Steelers franchise felt a little different. A little classier.

Maybe you can guess from this week that despite its foibles, I love where I’m from. Ask my wife — nothing chokes me up more than having to discuss how important Pittsburgh is to me. I’m so honored to be from here because there’s nowhere else I’d want to be from. A place where hard work and being tough have always been prized and yet you still get the door for someone. Hearing Rooney’s Golden Rule — Treat everybody the way you’d like to be treated. Give them the benefit of the doubt. But never let anyone mistake kindness for weakness.” — sums up my belief and why this story is so important to me.

Written by Gene Collier and Rob Zellers, The Chief first played the Pittsburgh Public Theater in 2003, always starring Atkins. It’s an incredible performance, just him on stage, talking to each member of the audience as if they are the only person there.

Directed by Steve Parys and with credits that feature so many of the talented crew members that I’ve been honored to work with in my life in advertising, The Chief is required viewing for all Pittsburgh residents, but if you love football, hearing some interesting stories or just love Tom Atkins, you need to watch it too.

You have a lot of choices as to how you can watch Night of the Living Dead. The Criterion collection, the original, colorized, animated, deep faked, you name it, you have so many ways to drink in the 1968 classic. Except please, whatever you do, please please please stay away from this one.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary. Anchor Bay put out this version that has the original co-writer John A. Russo writing and directing all new scenes. You think ll the changes to the Star Wars films was horrible? Well, I’ve got news for you.

I’ve avoided this for years because, well, I kind of enjoy Russo’s films on their own and know that he probably shouldn’t meedle with a movie that yeah, he feels some ownership toward, but that he should not put his signature on someone else’s painting.

There’s also a new music score, re-editing and remastering of the film and you know — yes, the remaster helps, it looks better — but as much of a cliche as “if it’s not broke is,” some cliches are written because they’re true.

Patton Oswalt said it best: “I don’t give a **** where the stuff I love comes from, I just love the stuff I love!” I don’t need to know how William Hinzman’s cemetery zombie got there. It doesn’t add anything to the classic at all. I don’t need to know that he was a child molester when he was once alive. I don’t need to see new footage of Dan (Grant Kramer), Mike (Adam Knox) and guard Charlie (Scott Kerschbaumer) loading up the body. Nor do I need to know that the outbreak first happened at Beekman’s Diner, which is the location of the sequel to this, Children of the Dead.

Debbie Rochon also shows up as a therapist interviewing Reverend John Hicks (Scott Vladimir Licina, who also did the music for this and nearly died of a “heart stroke” while filming). Before all this, he opened Hinzman’s coffin so that Arthur (George Drennen) and Hilda Krantz (Julie Wallace), the parents of one of his victims, could spit into it. Then, in the midst of the zombies running wild, he gets bitten by Hinzman right in the face. And he survives!

What takes away from it even more is the new ending — which literally breaks the dread that happens when — spoiler warning for a movie made before I was born — Ben dies and we shockingly watch him burn. Now, there’s a new close with Rochon coming back to interview the now deranged priest who says that he was healed by Holy Water and that the dead are literally demons, thereby telling us exactly why the dead have returned.

There’s also a gory car crash and the undead naked woman is gone, which is funny, because Russo is the man who brought us Scream Queens Swimsuit Sensations and Scream Queen’s Naked Christmas.

Russo isn’t all to blame for the 17 new minutes. Hinzman was produced and edited, while originals Russell Streiner, Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman were all part of this too. They cut twenty minutes from the real movie for this new stuff. Can you even imagine? Well, it happened. And none of the footage matches.

On the commentary, Russo claims that this story is what Romero wanted to do in 1968 but didn’t have the budget. Who can say?

The April 19, 1999 Entertainment Weekly reported: “Director George Romero owns the copyright on the title of his cult horror phenomenon Night of the Living Dead – but that’s about it. For a special anniversary edition due this fall, the film’s writer, John Russo, gathered members of the 1968 ghoul-fest’s crew in Pittsburgh to film 15 minutes of new footage. So they dug up some original equipment and dressed cinematographer Bill Hinzman as “the Cemetary Zombie.”

Romero, busy with his upcoming project Resident Evil, opted instead to put his name on the 20th anniversary director’s cut of the sequel, 1979’s Dawn of the Dead, due April 27. “I didn’t want to touch Night of the Living Dead” Romero says of his $114,000 feature debut, to which Russo has added prologue, epilogue, and extra zombie footage.

Of the reanimated film, Hinzman says, “We looked at it as, had we the money in 1968, how would we have made it?” But there’s no bad blood between the team, who all live in Pittsburgh: A long-standing deal gives both Romero and Russo the right to do as they please with the film. And the director is the kind of guy who never says die. Of future Night visions, Romero says, “I’ll do the one for the millennium.””

Guess what? I’ve now seen Children of the Living Dead and I’m going to put you through that one soon.