Best Horror Movies

The recently dead inexplicably began returning to life and destroying civilization. These “stenches” as they are called in the movie multiplied rapidly by adding to their ranks with every new victim. Many years later, the still-living in the vicinity have fled to the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a feudal-like government has taken over. Bordered on two sides by rivers and on the other by an electric barricade, the city has become a sanctuary against the undead threat. Fiddler’s Green, the center of this fortress city, is where the rich and powerful live in luxury while the rest of the local survivors live in poverty around them. Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), a tyrannical businessman, rules with an iron fist and overwhelming firepower.

In order to ensure his dominance and upscale lifestyle, Kaufman financed the construction of Dead Reckoning, a heavily armored vehicle that can venture out of the safe zone with relative ease. The vehicle is armed with heavy remote-controlled external machine guns, missile launchers, video cameras, and a fireworks launcher to distract the zombies, which are hypnotized by fireworks and will ignore all else to watch them. Riley Denbo (Simon Baker), the designer of Dead Reckoning and leader of the expeditions to retrieve salvageable goods, has decided to retire and leave the safety of the city. Unlike Kaufman, Riley is respected by the citizens of the fortress city for his work to protect them from a dangerous world. Eventually, Riley winds up in jail with his best friend Charlie Houk (Robert Joy), a slow-witted member of the Dead Reckoning team who happens to be a crack shot with his old M1 Carbine, and Slack (Asia Argento), a female soldier who has been pressed into prostitution and who was almost killed in a recent cage match with a pair of zombies. It was freeing Slack from the cage that led to Riley’s incarceration.

Meanwhile, Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo), the cocky second in command of the Dead Reckoning team, has become a renegade after being denied the opportunity to buy an apartment in Fiddler’s Green by Kaufman, looking to even the score. DeMora hijacks Dead Reckoning and threatens to destroy Fiddler’s Green unless his demands are met. Kaufman turns to Riley to stop Cholo, resulting in Riley, Slack, and Charlie’s release from prison. A trio of soldiers, Pilsbury, Motown, and Manolete, are assigned to assist them, but their mission is to recapture Dead Reckoning, whether Riley and his allies want them to or not. Manolete is soon bitten, and Motown later tries to kill Cholo only to be killed herself by a bullet from Slack, after being assaulted by a zombie, while Pilsbury changes sides and starts helping Charlie and Slack. As Riley finally catches Cholo, he convinces him to allow him to take Dead Reckoning and leave the city to head north, leaving Cholo and his “partner in crime,” Foxy, with a truck to go west. Shortly after this Cholo is bitten by a zombie. Cholo chooses to become a zombie rather than be shot immediately and wishes Foxy luck, letting him drive off.

The zombies are beginning to regain vestigial memories of their former lives: a brass band blows ineffectively on their aging horns, a gardener pushes his rusty lawn mower, a dead couple walk hand-in-hand, and a gas station attendant with the name tag “Big Daddy” lumbers out every time someone trips the pump bell. Big Daddy is particularly intelligent for a zombie (in a continuance of the “Bub” plot-line from Day of the Dead), quickly learning to operate a stolen firearm and becoming the undead protagonist amongst his fellow zombies. He also overcomes the effect of the fireworks, which the other zombies also do after being exposed again. Directing his fellow zombies, Big Daddy leads an attack on the human city in retaliation for the constant raids carried out by Dead Reckoning. With the electric fences proving impregnable to the zombies, Big Daddy realizes that they can simply walk across the riverbed without drowning.

The zombies converge on Fiddler’s Green. Kaufman witnesses his kingdom disintegrating as the zombies overcome the humans in a bloody massacre. As the zombies overtake the city, the humans discover the electric fence that previously kept the zombies out have become walls preventing their escape. When the crew uses fireworks to buy the people time to destroy the electric fences, it works only for a few moments. The zombies are now able to over come the effects of the fireworks.

As retribution after being shot by Kaufman, Big Daddy trails the fleeing despot to an underground garage where Kaufman plans to escape. Big Daddy finds Kaufman locked in his car next to a gas pump and, in a moment of undead “revelation,” begins pumping gas into the cab through a hole in the windshield. Apparently satisfied, he lumbers out of the garage.

Now a member of the undead, Cholo has located Kaufman, shooting at him before grappling with him. However, Big Daddy returns and once again displays his intelligence by rolling a burning road flare toward Kaufman’s gasoline-soaked vehicle. It explodes, hurling Kaufman and the undead Cholo away.

Meanwhile, Denbo and Dead Reckoning have fought to free the inhabitants of the now-overrun city. At the electric fence, the crew discovers a massacre; with nowhere to run, the citizens were killed by the zombies. After destroying the fence and relieving the victims from their final agony, the crew is now despondent, since it appears as if the city has been wiped out. However, most of the city’s lower-class inhabitants emerge from the carnage. While many had simply run and died, these others hid, and emerged unscathed. With the destruction caused by the zombies, the class system no longer exists, leveling the playing field for the lower-class. The zombies withdraw instead of attacking them.

Riley orders Pretty Boy (Joanne Boland), the navigator of Dead Reckoning to refrain from shooting Big Daddy with the vehicle’s weaponry as the zombies leave, because he realizes that, like them, he’s “just looking for a place to go.” Riley and his friends leave the city in Dead Reckoning, striking out for Canada. As they leave, they fire all of Dead Reckoning’s fireworks in a display of celebration.