THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE

George Meaning is taking a trip to the Lake District. However, Edna Simmons accidentally damages his motorbike while reversing her car at a petrol station. He demands that she give him a lift to his destination. Edna, planning to visit her sister Katie, wishes to visit Southgate first.

George and Edna eventually reach a dead end on a road while searching for Katie's house. George walks to a farm where men from the Ministry of Agriculture use an experimental machine. While asking for directions, he learns that their machinery is designed to kill insects through ultrasonic radiation. Meanwhile, while waiting at the car, Edna is attacked by a man who emerges from a river. She runs to find George for help, but her attacker is gone when they return to the car.

That night, Katie, who is addicted to heroin, awaits Edna's arrival. Katie's photographer husband, Martin, goes down to a waterfall near their remote cottage to complete a shoot of plant specimens. Left alone, Katie prepares to take heroin but is attacked by the same man who earlier attacked Edna. Katie is pursued to Martin's photo shoot. There, the man kills Martin, and Katie flees just as George and Edna arrive. When the three report the death, the police inspector suspects foul play by the trio. George is forced to stay in Southgate as a person of interest in the investigation. He secretly takes the roll of film from Martin's camera to a pharmacist to have it developed. Katie has a breakdown and is hospitalised. At the hospital, babies bite and scratch people with mysterious homicidal intensity.

George and Edna collect the photos, but Martin's killer does not appear in any of them; the man is actually a vagrant who had recently drowned in the river. The Inspector arrives and confiscates the photos. He later sends Constable Craig to follow the couple. They go to the graveyard and find a half-eaten meal in a room in the chapel. Following noises to a crypt, they come across the vagrant's empty coffin along with a murdered man. Locked in the crypt by someone, they again encounter the zombified vagrant, who brings the other bodies to life. The pair escapes up a ladder, kicking out a hole to climb into a freshly dug grave. Craig arrives and helps Edna and George out of the pit. The zombies pursue the trio into the church. They lock themselves in a room but are trapped there, with Craig finding that a gun is useless against the zombies. He makes a dash for the police radio he had dropped outside, but is caught by the zombies, who devour him.

The dead break into their room, and George throws a lit oil lamp at them. It smashes, and the zombies burst into flame. The two escape to their car, and Edna is sent to tell the police. George heads to the experimental machine, which is now working within a five-mile radius. The farmer and two Ministry of Agriculture employees, however, do not believe George, and he begins smashing the machine.

The Inspector finds Craig's and the caretaker's bodies and, believing that Edna and George may be Satanists and murderers, he issues orders "to shoot to kill." Edna arrives at her brother-in-law's farm and is met by the now-zombified Martin. Edna runs over him as she escapes. George finds Edna, drops her off at a petrol station, and leaves with a jerry can of fuel. George is eventually caught in a police trap, and Martin's body is taken back to the hospital.

In the farm field, the Ministry of Agriculture employees repair and re-activate the machine, which brings to life bodies in the hospital morgue. George escapes in a police car and learns that Edna is now in the hospital, where the zombies are killing people, including Katie and Edna.

George arrives and sets all the zombies on fire. He is eventually shot by the Inspector, who still does not believe in zombies. Returning to his hotel room for the night, the Inspector finds a zombified George waiting for him. In a field nearby, the machine continues working.

George and Edna fight to survive as zombies, revived by ultrasonic radiation, attack them in a rural town. The dead are set ablaze with a thrown oil lamp, allowing a narrow escape.

The film concludes with science gone awry, as technology meant for harmless pest control unleashes an unstoppable horror. The survivors' desperate fight against the living dead underscores the film's skepticism of unchecked technological progress, while the bleak tone and graphic violence seal its place in 1970s exploitation horror.