It stars Hugo Stiglitz as a TV news reporter who witnesses the collapse of order in a city overrun by irradiated blood-drinking ghouls.

American television reporter Dean Miller waits at a small European airport to interview a scientist about a recent nuclear accident, when an unmarked Lockheed C-130 Hercules military plane makes an emergency landing.

The plane doors open and dozens of armed, deformed men, the scientist among them, burst out and attack the military personnel on the runway; they are impervious to most injuries and bullet wounds and are relentless in their assault, stopping only to consume the blood of their victims.

Miller then tries to find his wife Anna, a doctor at the local hospital, as the crazed assailants overrun the city, their ranks swollen by their former victims.

Meanwhile, General Murchison meets with military officers and scientists at a hidden bunker where they find the attackers are contaminated humans who have been mutated by radiation.

Murchison's daughter Jessica and her husband, Bob, are on a holiday getaway in the country, oblivious to the carnage overtaking the city.

Meanwhile, Major Holmes arrives at a local airbase only to find it overrun, the pilots all dead and the only survivor mad with paranoia, leaving the military with no air support.

Arming themselves with sub-machine guns and grenades from dead soldiers, Miller and Anna kill several zombies, but are forced to flee.

They climb to the top of a roller coaster to escape when Major Holmes happens to fly by on his way back to Murchison's command post.

[8][9] From retrospective reviews, Sight and Sound referred to the film as a "spirited, if preposterous, zombie saga" with a "deeply contrived ending".

[5] In The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle wrote that the film is "at the best of moments, a forced and pointless test of endurance".