I’m a huge fan of John Russo, so when I learned that a documentary of his life was getting made — thanks to director James Harland Lockhart V — I was worried. Would someone love Russo and his contributions to horror as much as me? Would they treat him either too reverently or like too much of a joke? To be honest, I didn’t get to watch this as soon as I should have and I made a big mistake.

Because it’s really great.

It helps that Russo wrote this and basically it’s an on camera interview of him discussing his career. That way, we get it unfiltered, with him explaining what it was like to be one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead and work with the mythic cast and crew. From the actual filming to him wanting to go to court and sue the Walter Reade Organization for the money they stole from the filmmakers, it’s a passionate section of this movie, just as you would hope that it would be.

As a Pittsburgher, I also love that he went to Oyster Bar owner Louis J. Grippo as his counsel.

I’ve seen a few reviews on Letterboxd making light of the fact that this movie spends twenty minutes on Night of the Living Dead and then moves on to Russo’s other movies. Look, I love that movie. I own so many copies of it, I grew up minutes from the cemetery and I’ve watched it more times than I can even count. But everyone knows just about everything there is, down to the fact that Russo, Bill Hinzman and Gary Streiner were both set on fire making the movie.

What we don’t know is about Russo’s other films.

There’s some dirt on Return of the Living Dead and how Romero and Russo couldn’t agree on the sequel they had planned. The compromise was that Russo would get “Living Dead” for his titles and Romero would own “of the Dead.” That said, due to mistakes in how the original movie was retitled, it was already all in the public domain. Throughout, however, Russo speaks glowingly of Romero but not of Dawn of the Dead producer Richard P. Rubinstein.

Ass one of the biggest fans of Midnight and The Majorettes, so getting to hear behind the scenes info — much less learn the alternate British title of the latter is One by One because they have no idea what majorettes are overseas — is exactly why I’m watching this.

He also discusses how difficult it was to work with 21st Century on the remake of Night without mentioning Menahem Golan. I was concerned with how he’d discuss working with Karl Hardman, Hinzman and Streiner on the poorly received 30th anniversary remix, much less Children of the Dead, a film that he is very honest about. That movie is shot near the biggest swingers club in miles and you can see the bowling alley my uncle played league games in while zombies are eating people.

This checked off so many of my boxes. Will it mention There’s Always Vanilla? How about The Devil and Sam Silverstein? The Booby Hatch? Voodoo Dawn? There’s even a lot of footage from My Uncle John Is a Zombie, which is a late Russo film. It might even be the first time that some people see it.

When I was in my late teens, I was obsessed with seeing Heartstopper. It’s on this! Santa Claws? You know it. For a Russo superfan like me — who has a signed Midnight poster in a place of honor in my movie room, despite being stained with coffee from Russo’s mug — you can’t believe how exciting this all is, even if it misses out on things like Midnight 2, his Scream Queens softcore magazine, Monster Makeup, Horror Rock, Horror Effects with Tom Savini, Scream Queens’ Naked Christmas and Zombie Jamboree: The 25th Anniversary of Night of the Living Dead, which is nearly a home movie of Russo walking around the old Monroeville Expo Mart during a convention. But I realize that my mania will go deep and want to know such minutiae when others just want to hear about his first movie.

I mean, seeing the Calgon commercials — I grew up near the plant — and hearing Russo discuss them is why I’m going to watch this again.

There have been some discussions about the audio quality of this but I didn’t notice. I watch everything with close captions, so I had no issues. Then again, this is the kind of material that I’m going to pay close attention to. So yes, I may not be the most unbiased of reviewers on this — I feel like this was made for me — but if you have even the slightest interest in one of the most important American horror films ever made and the man who helped make it, this is well worth you taking the time to see this documentary.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy the DVD/blu ray here.