 In 1957, a rare rat monkey is brought from Sumatra to a zoo in New Zeland. The local Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) is a shy young man, having a complex due to the death of his father, and is completely dominated by his evil and possessive mother Vera (Elizabeth Moody). In a small shop nearby his house, Lionel meets the very superstitious attendant Paquita Maria Sanchez (Diana Peñalver), who believes he is the man of her life. Paquita invites Lionel to go to the zoo with her, but Vera follows them and is bitten by the weird Sumatrian monkey. The monkey s bite turns her into a zombie, and every person she bites also becomes a zombie. Lionel tries to hide the situation from Paquita, hiding his mother and the other zombies (his mother s nurse, the local priest and a grave thief) in his basement, using tranquilizer bought from a Nazi doctor to keep them calm. However, Lionel loses the control of the situation when his Uncle Les (Ian Watkin) arrives for his sister Vera s funeral and blackmails Lionel because of the corpses in the basement. Les promotes a big party in Lionel s house and all the guests become zombies.