The Majorettes
John Russo
Pocket Books, 1979
ISBN: 0-671-82315-9
I didn’t know exactly what a “majorette” was before I cracked open this book. I’m fairly sure in my high school experience the majorette was replaced with people who waved flags around. I don’t think there’s any flag-wavers getting slashed book, either. I wouldn’t know, I skipped most football games for pizza and the hundredth rewatch of Evil Dead II or a nasty slice of paperback horror. Much like The Majorettes by John A. Russo.
John A. Russo took an interesting path to get to becoming a paperback horror writer. He started out by co-writing Night of the Living Dead with George A. Romero. Not too many of those on bookstore shelves. Maybe to be successful you have to have an “A” middle initial. The trials and tribulations of the making of the first modern zombie film is well documented, but long-story-short, even though Romero and crew made one of the most successful (and best) horror flicks ever...they didn’t make much money off of it. So, Russo couldn’t just hang-out and rest on his laurels, he had to create.
Russo tried to match his earlier success with a couple more independent films, but they didn’t match the success of Night of the Living Dead, which subsequently kicked off his novel writing with a late-to-the-party novelization in 1974. A couple years later came the sequel which is not Dawn of the Dead, but Return of the Living Dead. See, Russo got the rights to the “Living Dead” part of a sequel and Romero had to settle for just “dead.” And thus the Night of the Living Dead universe was forever divided.
He got off of zombies by 1979 with The Majorettes, turning to the then burgeoning slasher craze. See, someone’s killing the Majorettes (get it?) at the local high school and everyone’s all shook up about it. After a make-out spot murder of a big ‘ol nerd and the girlfriend of the dangerous biker Mace more murders follow. While the town and the rest of the cast worry about it, Detective Martelli and his girlfriend Marie who is the majorette coach (lucky huh?) start to hunt the killer. Sort of, anyway.
The rest of the cast is made up of a couple high schoolers, the quarterback Jeff who’s got a lot of bad-luck throughout and Vicky who’s biggest character description is “majorette w/step-dad.” The stepdad and her alcoholic mother are there too, as is the rest of Mace’s motorcycle gang. Plus an evil nurse and near-comatose grandmother. Russo gives an ensemble instead of a lead to focus in on. You might think the leads would be Jeff or Vicky or the Cop and his girlfriend, but instead you bounce around all the characters including the mysterious slasher who gets his own dedicated sections of the book.
It sounds like it could be a mess, right? It’s not. The switching around keeps the book moving at a nice clip, sure not many of the characters are well-flesh out, but some of them are just there to get brutally murdered. For a giallo-type slasher shrouded in mystery, the killer is surprisingly well-rounded, since his backstory is given in fair detail (and it’s REALLY gross/creepy) just with Russo withholding the name. The rest are fairly entertaining in a B-Movie stock character kind of way. Tough cops who don’t want to settle down in marriage, gross-bikers who drink more beer than breathe air and do despicable things to locals and the squeaky clean teens with problems at home and school.
The ultimate reveal is a little obvious if you have any mystery experience, but still satisfying. In a lot of ways The Majorettes is a R-Rated R.L. Stine Fear Street novel. Well, maybe an X-Rated or Unrated “for excessive violence” one, this isn’t for the faint of heart in sections. It goes deep on perversion and gore in spots, just skirting “splatterpunk.” Russo is a meat and potatoes writer who produced short, easy to devore chapters that made you want to read “just one more” before setting the book down and the book has a perfect page count for a paperback horror novel, two-hundred and change.
Russo is still writing today and lot of his work is easily available (*cough-cough* some right here) but the vintage books are a little more expensive, his run with Pocket Books producing some great matching black and silver foil books that practically scream 80s. Also of note is that most of Russo’s novels were turned into low-budget horror films by Russo himself. Never waste an idea, folks. The Majorettes got turned into a movie in 1986. Read the books, watch the movies.
I don’t think Russo will ever get out of the shadow of Night of the Living Dead, Romero didn’t, but they both have proven that it’s not the only piece of work that they created that’s worthwhile. And to this day he’s still publishing new books and appearing in and making films. Rock on. The Majorettes is a cracking hack-and-slash book and one truest example of the subgenre to be published during its 1980s heyday.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.