The Living Dead is a 1992 horror film about a hostel hotel manager and serial killer/rapist named Abbot Hayes whose hotel in San Fransisco, California is shut down by the goverment in 1987 after a series of sudden disappearences of hotel guests right before they check out of the hotel. The very last "disappearence" of hotel guests before the big shut down was a young couple who had ordered room service just as they were packing up and getting ready to check out, but insted of them getting their food, Hayes knocked on the door and told them that he was the room service person. The lady opened the door hoping to get their food, but insted, Hayes walked into the room, locked the door, attacked the lady, and then stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife. Her boyfriend then appears and makes the gruesome discovery, that's when Hayes turns and attacks him as he tries to defend himself, but fails miserably when he gets slashed from behind and then stabbed in the back. After that, Hayes sexually assults the lady and places their bodies inside a chute that leads into the restricted underground lair that only Hayes has confidental access to. After the hotel closes down, Abbot Hayes then disappears from the morgue and is not to be seen. Five years later, Abbot Hayes decides to re-open the hotel, and since there were no more sudden disappearences from the area, the goverment granted him permission to hire new hotel employees and restart the hotel that closed down. On September 15, 1992, Abbot Hayes invents some brand new technology that would bring dead organisms back to life as zombies, so he uses the machine to take the rotten corpses of the hotel guests he murdered over the years and watch as the machine shoots an electric ray at the corpses one at a time as dead skin forms on corpse and eyeballs appear from where the empty eye sockets are located and the corpse wakes up. After all of the zombies are brought back to life, one of the employees radios to Hayes saying that a hotel guest had ordered room service. Hayes sends one of the zombies to go to the room and attack the young couple at the room. After a few minutes, the zombie knocks on the door and the young lady opens the door. The lady finds it strange that the zombie is acting "mentally retarded", but before the lady could ask more questions, the zombie eats out her flesh and causes her boyfriend to scream in terror. The zombie then goes after the young man and bites him in the arm before taking off. The young man calls 9-1-1 using the hotel room's telephone and says that a hotel employee killed his girlfriend and attacked him as well before fleeing the scene. The cops soon arrive as they take away the murdered lady's body in a body bag and had put a white bandage around her boyfriend's zombie bite wound as he lay on the ground as if he was dying. During the investigation, it is revealed that his real name is Daniel Hermit, as time passes by, Daniel soon slips into a colma and dies as he lays on the ground. Meanwhile, two cops (Officer Mark Hogus and Officer James Ryant) just outside of the room talk about this mysterious investigation and try to figure out exactly what went down. But to make matters worse, Daniel turns into a zombie and attacks one of the paramedics by biting his neck and then chases another paramedic who opens the door and runs for his life. The two officers view the paramedic opening the door and running for his life, and as soon as they look at Daniel, they actually know right away that he has turned into a zombie. So the officers take aim and shoot Daniel in the head as he runs toward the officers. They soon discover that one of the paramedics had been bitten by Daniel, and Officer Hogus and Ryant knew that he was soon going to turn into a zombie, so they told everyone to evacuate the hotel room. Meanwhile, Hayes had let Nathan (one of his hotel employees) inside his restricted underground lair, where he was trapped, was bitten by one of the zombies, and was stuck inside until he eventually turned into a zombie himself. Hayes had now decided to release his undead army into the hotel and order them to attack everyone inside the hotel, Nathan was the first zombie to be released. The end of the movie features Officers Hogus and Ryant getting into a shootout with Hayes after finding out that he was responsible for the disappearences from the hotel, as well as the fact that he murdered them. Hayes ends up getting shot and falls out the window and into the ocean as he secretly swims away only to be again in the second film. A light gun arcade game adaption was developed by Sega and was released for the arcade and the Sega Saturn in the Summer of 1992.
| The Living Dead | |
|---|---|
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Directed by |
Tor Ramsey |
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Produced by |
Karen R. Wolf |
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Starring |
Tom Cruise |
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Music by |
John Hopking |
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Studio |
Artisian Pictures |
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Distributed by |
Universal Studios |
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Release Date |
June 5, 1992 |
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Running time |
95 minutes |
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Language |
English |
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Followed by |
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