J is for Jesse - A to Z Blogging Challenge 2014

J is for Jesse - A to Z Blogging Challenge 2014

Return of the Living Dead Part II opens with a army convoy carrying contaminated barrels of noxious gases that predictably aren’t secured to withstand a few bumps, leaving one container to fall from the bed of the truck down into a secluded gully near a subdivision still under construction. Night turns into day and we meet young Jesse Wilson (Michael Kenworthy) being bullied by two classmates, a gangly Thor van Lingen as brace-faced Billy, and Jason Hogan as Johnny, one of his flunkies. The two decide it’s time to initiate Jesse into their club and forcefully persuade him to go with them to their clubhouse. As it turns out, the three arrive at a local crypt where Johnny and Billy try to lock Jesse inside, but he manages to escape from them and runs into a large drainage pipe. After he is caught, the three notice a large barrel and Billy and Johnny begin to mess with it, despite the reluctance of Jesse. Subsequent to discovering a corpse locked inside the container, the boys take off. Fearing that Jesse will tell on them, Johnny and Billy lock Jesse inside the crypt and leave him there for the night.

In the meantime. arriving at the same cemetery are grave robbers Ed, Joey, and Joey’s girlfriend, Brenda. Ed and Joey plan to break into the crypt and steal jewelry off the recently deceased to earn some quick cash. Once inside, they begin their work, but not before Jesse is able to escape from the crypt without a trace. Throughout this disproportionate confusion, Billy and Johnny retrace their account with the sinister canister, and through much stubbornness open it and unleash a chemical known as ‘Trioxin’ into the air. This potent chemical, once inhaled or contacted through the pours in the skin, begins to slowly infect the immune and nervous system, turning you into a walking corpse whose only antidote is human brains. When the chemical seeps into the local cemetery it somehow revives the dead and all hell breaks lose.

Back at home, Jesse tries to convince his sister Lucy that something is terribly wrong, but she doesn’t listen and locks poor Jesse in his room. At the crypt things don’t seem to be going too well for Ed and Joey, either. The corpse they were working on has now returned back to life and outside is swarming with the living dead. As Joey, Ed and Brenda flee from the cemetery they run into trouble outside of Jesse’s home. The five group together with a local cable installer to try and escape from the town. But their operation is cut short once they discover the military has sealed off all exits leading out of town. Now they must somehow survive through the night with hungry zombies on their trail, will they make it out alive?

*thanks to the Return of the Living Dead Wikia for the info!