15 B-List Zombie Movies from the 80s That Became Unlikely Cult Classics

Zombie movies from the 80s are a special bunch, especially the ones that didn't get the big spotlight at first but later turned into movies that lots of people love and watch over and over; these are the films that might not have had the biggest budgets or the most famous actors, but they've got loads of charm and scares that make them unforgettable.

1. Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981)

In this Italian horror film, a professor accidentally unleashes a curse that awakens the undead in an ancient crypt; a group of visitors at his estate, including a peculiar adult playing a child, must fend off the hungry horde of zombies in a desperate fight for survival.

2. City of the Walking Dead ( 1980)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 50%

Also known as "Nightmare City." When an unmarked military plane makes an emergency landing, it unleashes a horde of bloodthirsty, radioactive mutants upon an unsuspecting city, where a reporter and his wife must escape the carnage and alert the public.

3. The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 44%

After a toxic spill reanimates the corpse of a young woman, she returns with a gruesome thirst for blood; her childhood friend discovers her undead state and is torn between love and fear as they confront the horror of her existence.

4. Deadly Eyes (1982)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 33%

Mutant rats, grown massive after feeding on steroid-laced grain, terrorize a city, leading a high school teacher, a health inspector, and a basketball player to battle the oversized rodents and save their community from the unfolding chaos.

5. Flesh Eater (1988)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 27%

A farmer unwittingly releases a zombie from its buried vault, leading to an outbreak that consumes a small town; survivors, including teenagers celebrating Halloween, must band together to fend off the flesh-eating menace.

6. The Video Dead (1987)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 32%

A cursed television set, delivered to the wrong address, becomes the portal for zombies to enter the real world, forcing a young man and his sister to combat the undead creatures that emerge from the screen.

7. Redneck Zombies (1989)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 42%

When a barrel of toxic waste is mistakenly used to brew moonshine in the backwoods, it turns the drinkers into flesh-eating redneck zombies; a group of campers must evade and fight off the cannibalistic horde.

8. One Dark Night (1982)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 41%

A teenage girl, as part of an initiation rite, must spend the night in a mausoleum, unaware that it is home to a powerful psychic's corpse and his telekinetically controlled cadavers, leading to a night of terror.

9. Zeder (1983)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience score: 75%

A journalist discovers a used typewriter ribbon that reveals research on "K-zones," areas where the dead can return to life; his investigation leads him into a sinister world of the undead and those who seek to exploit this phenomenon.

10. The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 45%

A family moves into a New England house that harbors a horrific secret in its basement, where a deranged scientist's experiments have unleashed a malevolent presence, putting them in grave danger.

11. The Beyond (1981)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 68%

A woman inherits a dilapidated hotel in Louisiana, only to discover it's built over one of the seven gateways to hell; as she renovates, strange, gory deaths occur, signaling the awakening of undead beings.

12. Night of the Comet (1984)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 79%

After a comet wipes out most of life on Earth, leaving behind dust and zombie-like creatures, two valley girl sisters team up with a group of survivors to fight the undead and save humanity.

13. Night of the Creeps (1986)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 73%

Alien brain parasites, entering humans through the mouth, turn their hosts into a killing zombie horde; it's up to two college students, a detective, and a flamethrower-wielding fraternity president to save the day.

14. Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 5%

A group of kids accidentally release a gas that reanimates the dead, leading to chaos as zombies overrun their town; a mix of horror and comedy ensues as they try to find a way to stop the undead apocalypse.

15. Re-Animator (1985)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%

A medical student discovers a serum that can reanimate deceased bodies; when he experiments in the morgue, he unwittingly unleashes chaos within the medical school as the dead come back to life with a violent hunger.