Villian(s)  Toxic gas, undead

Actor(s):  Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews

Brief Description  The Return of the Living Dead (1985) is a highly influential satirical comedy-horror cult classic written and directed by Dan O'Bannon. Celebrated for blending gruesome special effects with a sharp punk-rock aesthetic, the film famously introduced the concept that zombies specifically eat human brains (rather than just flesh) to relieve the agonizing pain of being dead.

Plot:
The chaos begins at a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. A bumbling foreman named Frank (James Karen) tries to impress a new hire, Freddy (Thom Mathews), by showing him misplaced, top-secret U.S. military canisters containing corpses from a 1968 incident. Frank accidentally cracks open one of the tanks, releasing a toxic gas called Trioxin. The gas knocks them unconscious and immediately reanimates a nearby medical cadaver. Desperate to cover up the accident, the warehouse owner, Burt (Clu Gulager), and his mortician friend, Ernie (Don Calfa), try to incinerate the chopped-up zombie parts in a crematorium furnace. Instead, the smoke rises into the atmosphere, causing a toxic rainstorm that seeps into the soil of the adjacent Resurrection Cemetery. Within minutes, hundreds of corpses claw their way out of the graves. They swarm the graveyard, trapping a colorful group of teenage punks—including Trash (Linnea Quigley), Suicide (Mark Venturini), and Freddy's girlfriend, Tina (Beverly Randolph)—who were partying there while waiting for Freddy to finish his shift.