- Directed by Dan O’Bannon
- Rudy Ricci, John A. Russo, Russell Streiner
- Stars Clu Galager, James Karen, Don Calfa
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Synopsis
“The events portrayed in this film are all true. The names are real names of real people and real organizations.”
On July 3, 1984, A couple of guys, Freddy and Frank, are getting an order ready to ship. They’re in a medical supply company, and they’re getting ready to mail a skeleton. It’s a real skeleton, and they get them from India. They sell “split dogs” for veterinary schools and they even have intact cadavers. Actually, they only have one cadaver right now.
Meanwhile, the punk kids are looking for a place to party. “I like death with sex,” says one of them. Freddy’s girlfriend says they should all go to his job to pick him up after work.
Frank, a big joker, explains that “Night of the Living Dead” really happened. There was a chemical spill, and it got into the morgue somehow. The bodies were accidentally shipped here,” he claims. “Wanna see them? The corpses are still here, down in the basement.” Frank shows Freddy several sealed barrels that do in fact, contain bodies. Frank slaps a barrel, and it shoots out a chemical. As the credits roll, the gas moves through the pipes and the lone cadaver upstairs wakes up.
Colonel Glover talks to his wife; he’s been looking for those missing bodies for decades. Freddy’s friends arrive too early and decide to go hang out in the nearby cemetery for a couple of hours. They turn on the boom box (this is the 80s after all) and get to work partying.
Frank and Freddy wake up. The body in the barrel is gone; did it melt when it hit the air? They go upstairs and Frank sprays the place with Lysol, until the notice on of the half-dogs whining. All the dead stuff in the warehouse comes to life. Freddy wants to call the army, but Frank wants to call Burt, the boss.
Outside, Trash takes off her clothes and dances on a crypt while the guys dance with emergency flares. Meanwhile, Burt is freaking out of the mess at the supply company. Burt, Frank, and Fred do what they have to do with the storeroom zombie, which goes comically wrong at every turn. Destroying the “like in the movie” doesn’t work. Burt wants to take the still-kicking parts across the street to the mortuary and cremate the thing.
Ernie the embalmer is working on a corpse as they arrive. Burt tells Ernie that he has a bunch of rabid weasels in bags. He doesn’t believe that, so they have to show him what’s really in the bag.
It’s time for Freddy to get off work, so Tina goes the the medical supply company looking for him. They’re all at the mortuary burning the body. Burning bodies make smoke, which means more chemical vapors. More importantly, it starts to rain, which soon covers everything in the chemical. It burns the punks like acid rain. The rain seeps down into the graveyard, doing exactly what you’d expect it to do.
The body at the mortuary is all burnt up, but now Freddy and Frank are looking really sick. Ernie calls for an ambulance. Neither of them have a pulse, but they are clearly not dead. They’re at room temperature.
Tina keeps looking for Freddy and finds the original empty barrel, and the dead thing that came out of it. The erst of the gang come looking, and it kills “Suicide,” the leader of the group. They all run back to the cemetery, where they soon see the dead emerging from their graves. “Trash” is also killed, as are both paramedics. Ernie thinks maybe “things are getting out of hand.”
Within seconds, everyone still alive is trapped in the mortuary, surrounded by uncountable zombies. Rigor mortis is setting in on Freddy and Frank. More paramedics arrive, and they don’t even make it to the door. “Scuz” is killed, and Ernie captures one of the dead and interrogates it. Eating brains makes the pain of being dead go away. They lock Freddy, Frank, and Tina in the chapel.
During all this, “Trash” wakes up from being dead and starts killing people. So do Freddy and Frank. Burt and Spider make it to one of the police cars and find out just how many undead are really out there. Frank crawls into the crematorium and kills himself. Burt finally gets through to the police, but the police are overwhelmed too.
Finally, Burt calls the number stamped on the original tank, which immediately goes through to Colonel Glover, who’s been waiting for this call for twenty years. The colonel calls out the artillery which destroys twenty square blocks. The fires won’t be a problem, since the rain will wash everything away…
Commentary
This, as far as I know, was the first purely comedic zombie film, although most have been at least a little tongue-in-cheek. The makeup and gore effects are excellent, but the most memorable parts of this one are the funny bits, and there are a lot of them. The practical effects are excellent and still holds up well today. No one has a cell phone because it’s in the 80s, but otherwise, the story itself really holds up well.
This one is old, but it’s really one of the best zombie films.