Epidemic of the Living Dead

In this imaginative and twisted take on the zombie genre, the residents of Chapel Grove, Pa., live in constant fear of an outbreak of a plague that turns people into zombies. Dr. Marissa Traeger runs the local medical research institute and is looking for a cure to the plague. When infected needles disappear, she calls on police captain Pete Danko and officer Bill Curtis to investigate. The needles are now in the hands of junkies, and the plague breaks out at a heavy metal concert. When some of the victims arrive at the hospital, they attack, and four pregnant women are infected. The babies are born, but the mothers die. Marissa sees this as an opportunity and quickly gets the four orphaned children into her program. Years later, bodies begin to disappear from the mortuary, families are murdered, and the town’s teens go through radical changes during puberty. Bill, worried for his daughter, slowly begins to suspect that the four orphans, now teens, are behind these events. Fans of the zombie genre will love how Russo, screenwriter of Night of the Living Dead, twists the mythos and creates a new, frightening creature to infect the world. (Sept.)