Braindead

Lionel Cosgrove lives under the iron control of his overbearing mother Vera in 1950s New Zealand. When she is bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey at the local zoo — a creature with a legendarily cursed origin — she begins to decay and reanimate, biting and infecting those around her. Lionel, terrified of scandal and of losing the only woman who has ever controlled him, keeps the growing horde of zombies sedated in his basement while trying to maintain the pretense of a normal life.

He has also fallen in love with Paquita, a local shopgirl who believes they are fated for each other. As Lionel juggles his romance with his increasingly unmanageable undead collection, his scheming Uncle Les arrives, discovers the basement, and tries to leverage it for money. His plan backfires catastrophically when the zombies escape during a party, infecting the guests and overrunning the house.

In the film's blood-drenched finale, Lionel takes a lawnmower to the zombie horde in a sequence of gleeful, extreme carnage that became one of horror cinema's most infamous set pieces. Vera reveals herself in her true monstrous form and attempts to consume Lionel, regressing him to a womb-like state before he tears free and defeats her. He and Paquita escape into the dawn, the house in ruins behind them.