(1968) Night of the Living Dead

Barbra and Johnny Blair drive to rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave. Barbra is attacked by a strange man walking in the cemetery. Johnny tries to rescue his sister, but the man throws him against a gravestone; Johnny strikes his head on the stone and is killed. After a mishap with the car, Barbra escapes on foot, with the stranger in pursuit, and later arrives at a farmhouse, where she discovers a woman's mangled corpse. Fleeing from the house, she is confronted by strange menacing figures like the man in the graveyard. Ben arrives and takes her into the house, driving the "monsters" away and sealing the doors and windows. Throughout the night, Barbra slowly descends into a stupor of shock and insanity.

Ben and Barbra are unaware that the farmhouse has a cellar, housing an angry married couple, Harry and Helen Cooper, along with their daughter Karen. They sought refuge after a group of the same monsters overturned their car. Tom and Judy, a teenage couple, arrived after hearing an emergency broadcast about a series of brutal murders. Karen has fallen seriously ill after being bitten by one of the monsters. They venture upstairs when Ben turns on a radio, while Barbra awakens from her stupor. Harry demands that everyone hide in the cellar, but Ben deems it a "deathtrap" and continues upstairs, to barricade the house with Tom's help.

Radio reports explain that a wave of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern United States. Ben finds a television, and they watch an emergency broadcaster report that the recently deceased have become reanimated and are consuming the flesh of the living. Experts, scientists, and the United States military fail to discover the cause, though one scientist suspects radioactive contamination from a space probe. It returned from Venus, and was deliberately exploded in the Earth's atmosphere when the radiation was detected.

Ben plans to obtain medical care for Karen when the reports list local rescue centers offering refuge and safety. Ben and Tom refuel Ben's truck while Harry hurls molotov cocktails from an upper window at the ghouls. Judy follows him, fearing for Tom's safety. Tom accidentally spills gasoline on the truck, setting it ablaze. Tom and Judy try to drive the truck away from the pump, but Judy is unable to free herself from its door, and the truck explodes, killing them both; the zombies promptly eat the charred remains.

Ben returns to the house but is locked out by Harry. Eventually forcing his way back in, Ben beats Harry, angered by his cowardice, while the zombies feed on the remains of Tom and Judy. A news report reveals that only a gunshot or heavy blow to the head can stop them, aside from setting the "reactivated bodies" on fire. It also reports that posses of armed men are patrolling the countryside to restore order.

The lights go out, and the zombies break through the barricades. Harry grabs Ben's rifle and threatens to shoot him. In the chaos, the two fight and Ben manages to wrestle the gun away and shoots Harry. Harry stumbles into the cellar and collapses next to Karen, mortally wounded. She has also died from her illness. The ghouls try to pull Helen and Barbra through the windows, but Helen frees herself. She returns to the refuge of the cellar to see Karen is reanimated and eating Harry's corpse. Helen is frozen in shock, and Karen stabs her to death with a masonry trowel. Barbra, seeing Johnny among the zombies, is carried away by the horde and devoured. As the zombies overrun the house, Ben fights off Karen and seals himself inside the cellar, where Harry and Helen are reanimating, and he is forced to shoot them.

The next morning, Ben is awakened by the posse's gunfire outside. Upon venturing upstairs, the posse mistake him for one of the ghouls and kill him with a shot to the forehead. Ben's body is thrown onto a pile of corpses which are set ablaze.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon that reanimates recently deceased human beings as flesh-eating zombies. Three weeks after it began - despite the best efforts of the U.S. government and local authorities to control the situation - millions of people have been killed and reanimate; social order is collapsing. Some rural communities and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, but urban centers are helpless and largely overrun.

Confusion reigns at the WGON television studio in Philadelphia by the phenomenon's third week, where staff members Stephen Andrews (David Emge) and Francine Parker (Gaylen Ross) are planning to steal the station's traffic helicopter to escape the city. Meanwhile, police SWAT officer Roger DiMarco and his team raid a housing project where the residents are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to National Guardsmen. Some residents fight back with handguns and rifles, and are killed by both the overzealous SWAT team and their own reanimated dead. During the raid, Roger meets Peter Washington, part of another SWAT team, and they partner up together. Roger tells Peter that his friend Stephen intends to steal his workplace's helicopter and flee, and suggests that Peter come with them. They are informed of a group of zombies trapped in the basement, which they assist in the grim job of destroying.

That night, Roger and Peter rendezvous with Francine and Stephen and leave Philadelphia in the helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, which they decide to make their sanctuary. The group devise an operation to block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead masses outside from building up enough cumulative force to break through. Peter and Stephen also craft a wooden barrier to cover the access to the stairwell that leads to their living space. During the blockade operation, Roger suffers from a mental break, becomes reckless and is bitten by the zombies.

After clearing the interior of zombies, the four are able to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them, furnishing their makeshift apartment with the mall's many commodities. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds, soon reanimates and is shot in the head by Peter. After several months, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed and a large portion of the population has been killed and reanimated. Francine, now visibly showing her pregnancy, presses to be prepared to leave the shopping mall. Ammo and other supplies are loaded into the helicopter, and Stephen teaches Francine how to operate the helicopter in case of emergency.

A gang of nomadic motorcyclists, having seen the helicopter during one of Francine's flying lessons, arrive to conquer the mall destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies inside during the incursion. Peter and Stephen try locking the gates to prevent looting, The rioting bikers enrage Stephen and he foolishly starts a gun battle with them. Both Peter and Stephen flee to the apartment, but as Stephen tries to escape through an elevator shaft, is shot in the arm, then cornered by the undead and bitten several times. As some of the bikers, shot by Peter, are consumed by the zombies, the rest retreat with their stolen goods. A reanimated Stephen, apparently acting on a remnant of his former memories, limps over to the false wall covering the stairwell and leads the undead to Francine and Peter. As Stephen enters their hideout, Peter kills him while Francine escapes to the roof. Peter then locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide. When zombies burst into the room, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Francine. The two then fly away in the partially fueled helicopter to an uncertain future.

Creepshow (1982)