Return of the Living Dead Part II is a 1988 American comedy horror film written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn, and starring Michael Kenworthy, Marsha Dietlein, Dana Ashbrook, Thom Mathews, James Karen, and Phil Bruns. It is the first of four sequels to The Return of the Living Dead.
Return of the Living Dead Part II was released by Lorimar Motion Pictures on January 15, 1988, and was a minor box office success, making over $9 million at the box office in the United States against its $6.2 million budget.
Plot
A U.S. military truck is transporting barrels of Trioxin, when one breaks loose and falls into a river without the driver noticing. The next morning, pre-teen bullies Johnny and Billy take a reluctant Jesse Wilson to a cemetery mausoleum for an initiation into their friend group. Frightened, Jesse flees into a nearby storm drain, where the three stumble across the rogue barrel. Upon opening it, they find a corpse inside and run away screaming as the toxic gas contained within begins to leak out. When Jesse proposes calling the Army from a phone number listed on the barrel, the bullies trap and leave him in the derelict mausoleum.
Billy and Johnny return to the barrel and open it, releasing the Trioxin gas that begins to permeate the whole cemetery. Grave robbers Ed and Joey, along with Joey's girlfriend Brenda, arrive at the cemetery in a van. While Brenda stays behind in the van, Ed and Joey open the mausoleum to loot the tombs within, allowing Jesse to run home. Meanwhile, acid rainfall causes the Trioxin to begin seeping into the ground and reanimating the corpses.
At home, Jesse is ordered to do his homework by his older sister, Lucy. However, Jesse sneaks out when a cable repairman, Tom, arrives at the house. Jesse goes to Billy's house, where Billy has fallen ill. Suffering from the effects of Trioxin, Billy warns Jesse not to tell anyone what they found. Jesse returns to the sewer to examine the barrel. Upon seeing a tar-covered zombie, Jesse flees to the cemetery, where the newly resurrected bodies begin to dig their way out of the ground. In the mausoleum, Ed and Joey witness a corpse come to life. Joey strikes its head with a crowbar, and they flee the building. They run into a hysterical Brenda as a mob of zombies grows.
Jesse gets home and tries to tell Lucy about the zombie uprising, but she dismisses him and locks him in his room. He starts a fire to set off the smoke alarm, which distracts Lucy so he can escape. Jesse calls the Army and gets through to Colonel Glover, but the call gets disconnected. Ed, Joey, and Brenda steal Tom's van but are unable to get through the zombie horde, so they barge into Jesse's house. Joey begins to fall ill from Trioxin exposure. As the zombies close in on the house, the survivors attempt to find a getaway car. They manage to break into a doctor's house, where they convince him to let them use his car, and they drive to a hospital emergency room that appears to be deserted.
At Billy's house, Billy's father is attacked and eaten by zombies. Fully turned, Billy proceeds to attack his mother. Elsewhere, Tom, Lucy, and Jesse drive through the town—which has apparently been abandoned—to Lucy and Jesse's grandfather's house, where they arm themselves with guns. They return to the hospital where Ed and Joey are experiencing symptoms of rigor mortis. Jesse is attacked by a zombie that both he and Tom shot multiple times. The group, including Joey and Ed, leave in the car and come across National Guardsmen. A fully zombified Ed attacks and kills one of the soldiers, causing his squadmates to flee. Brenda drives away with Joey, leaving Ed behind. Brenda is attacked by a zombified Joey, and willfully lets him cannibalize her.
Fleeing in a stolen ambulance, the survivors come to a roadblock, and the National Guard opens fire on them, thinking they are zombies. Realizing that the whole town has been evacuated, Tom drives them to a meat packing plant. They take a truck and distribute brains out of the back as they drive to a power plant, intending to electrocute them all. Billy opens the gate and zombies corner them into the truck. Jesse activates the plant's power, electrocuting all of the zombies. Billy tries to kill Jesse but Jesse pushes him into a large transformer, killing him. Glover and his men arrive to contain the scene and lead the others away.