The film centres around a baseball player who is killed by a group of teenagers and is resurrected as a zombie by a Haitian voodoo priestess.

Baseball player William Washington is fatally stabbed defending a young black girl from two white teenage boys.

After Tony disrupts a robbery at a grocery store, he is struck and killed by a car full of teenagers: Bob, Amy, Jim, Peter, and Susie.

Now revealed to be a Haitian voodoo priestess, Molly resurrects Tony as a zombie and uses her powers to guide him to the teenagers, aiding him in his revenge.

Director Jack Bravman wanted to transition from adult films to horror, and contacted John Fasano after hearing about his work on Blood Sisters.

Associate Professor of the University of Lethbridge Sean Brayton described the original concept as "a retribution narrative" of a black character getting revenge on the white perpetrators of his death.

[4] The script was later changed to give the teens more white-sounding names because investors were worried that a black-centric cast would not sell in the foreign market.

[6] Zombie Nightmare was produced by Montreal-based company Gold-Gems Productions and was the film debut of American actress Tia Carrere.

[9] Manuska Rigaud, who played voodoo priestess Molly Mokembe, was a professional Tina Turner impersonator.

[11] Tony Bua and Andy Clement, college friends of Fasano, made the zombie masks and provided the makeup for the film.

[12] American cast and crew members were housed in an airport hotel with pornography being played on every television channel, and they noticed that Bravman's name appeared in the credits for many of the films.

Other bands heard on the soundtrack include Virgin Steele, Girlschool, Fist, and Death Mask, and a track by Thor's then-wife and backup singer Rusty Hamilton.

Bissette thought the makeup and production values to be competent and noted Rigaud's "absurd over-the-top performance".

[21] Ian Jane of DVD Talk wrote that the film was horrible but so "deliciously goofy" one couldn't help but have fun with it.

[23] Jim Craddock, author of VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever, summarized the film as "cheap and stupid".

[24] Zombie Nightmare was featured in a season six episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), a cult science fiction comedy television series in which the character Mike Nelson and his two robot friends Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo are forced to watch bad films as part of an ongoing scientific experiment.

The episode was first showcased during Comedy Central's "Fresh Cheese" fall 1994 tour around college campuses in the United States.