John Russo returns to the living dead with My Uncle John Is a Zombie

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

On October 1st, 1968, forty-seven years ago today, George A. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had its premiere screening and the horror genre was forever changed. Romero and NIGHT co-creator John A. Russo have both returned to the land of the dead several times since, and Russo is now gearing up to do it again, developing a $120,000 independent film entitled MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE.

The inspiration comes from a commercial Russo recently starred in for the TV network Epix, where he played a zombie version of himself to promote a showing of WORLD WAR Z. The reaction to that spot was so positive that Russo decided to spin his zombie character off into his own feature film.

The story

centers around a zombie whose family took him in and rehabilitated him (to a degree), and he has been living in hiding all of these years.  Now in a post-zombie, modern world, Uncle John is about to be discovered.

As word gets out about Uncle John and the fact that, although he is a zombie, he still has considerable communication skills and a witty sense of humor, his popularity starts to spread faster than the zombie apocalypse itself, with news coverage (and fame) growing by the day.

However, there are some people who do not want to see zombies of any kind getting notoriety, who believe that the only good zombie is a dead zombie, and make it their mission to capture Uncle John and have a little fun at their hunt club. 

Russo has written the screenplay and will co-direct the film with Robert L. Lucas while also starring as Uncle John. He'll be joined in the cast by Debbie Rochon; Lloyd Kaufman; Nicholas Knight; co-producer Gary Lee Vincent as John's nephew Oscar; DJ/model/dancer/firebreather Cy-Fi as John's beautiful caretaker and niece, who makes sure he's fed; Sal Lizard as Vampire Santa; Chuck Corby as Stush, the head of the zombie hunt club; NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD sheriff George Kosana as a retired sheriff; Solon Tsangaras as a hunter-turned-zombie; Susanne Banks as investigative journalist Heather Blanks; and Katharine Diane Watson as UK investigative journalist Laura Lance.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is one of my all-time favorite films, so the idea of MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE is quite appealing to me, as it sounds like a fun project that will have some amusing callbacks to the classic. I'm looking forward to seeing what Russo and his cohorts pull off with this one.