Dean Miller [Hugo Stiglitz] waits at a small European airport to interview a scientist about a recent nuclear accident when an unmarked Lockheed C-130 lands and doors swing open. Dozens of armed, deformed men, the scientist among them, erupt from the plane and attack the runway staff. They seem impervious to bullets and injuries, and they relentlessly feed on the blood of their victims. Miller races to the TV station where he works to warn the public, only to find a wall of silence from General Murchison [Mel Ferrer], a Civil Defense official who shuts down the news and locks the crew inside with bombs ready to detonate to keep the catastrophe quiet. The growing threat seems to spread as the infected hunt more victims.
As the city spirals, Miller searches for his wife, Dr. Anna Miller [Laura Trotter], who works at the local hospital, hoping to reunite and warn them both. The chaos surges through the streets as the infected overrun areas, and overhead, the plan to contain the outbreak begins to crumble. At the TV station, zombies assault the building, forcing Miller to flee toward the hospital where Anna works. By nightfall, the power grid collapses after an attack on the city’s power station, plunging the area into darkness and amplifying the sense of impending doom. Miller and Anna eventually escape the hospital in a stolen ambulance, but the danger is far from over.
Behind the scenes, General Murchison and his team realize the horror is not a mystery but a tragedy born of radiation. The attackers are contaminated humans mutated by radiation, possibly infected by the scientist who investigated a leak at the state nuclear plant. They are unnaturally strong, extraordinarily fast, and endowed with lightning reflexes, yet their bodies cannot regenerate red blood cells, driving them to drink blood to avoid dehydration and inevitable death. The only sure way to stop them is to destroy their brains.
The ripple of danger reaches Murchison’s family. His daughter Jessica [Stefania D'Amario] and her husband Bob [Pierangelo Civera] are vacationing nearby, and they too fall prey to the outbreak, making a tragic misstep as they are infected and killed by pursuing soldiers. Major Warren Holmes [Francisco Rabal], Murchison’s official aide, tries to balance duty with the human cost as the crisis deepens. Holmes calls his wife Sheila [Maria Rosaria Omaggio], at their country house, and warns her to stay inside. The terror arrives at their door when two infected men break in; Sheila fights them off, but the threat of infection presses closer.
The next day, Miller and Anna push toward safety and stop at a filling station, where a small band of infected attack. Miller improvises a Molotov cocktail and blows apart the surrounding zombies and the ambulance, enabling the couple to push on on foot. They seek shelter in a village church, only to discover an infected priest they must kill to survive. Meanwhile, Major Holmes reaches a local airbase, only to find it overrun and the pilots dead or maddened by the contagion. A lone survivor points to the depth of the crisis, and Holmes, under orders, ultimately abandons the base after confirming that jets have been sabotaged. He then flies toward home to rescue his wife, only to find Sheila infected and forced to kill her own husband’s resolve.
Miller and Anna escape the church and press on toward an abandoned amusement park, now crawling with the infected. They arm themselves with weapons taken from dead soldiers and fend off wave after wave of predatory figures. Reaching the roller coaster, they climb to the top to escape, and Holmes’s helicopter unexpectedly passes overhead. He lowers a rope, allowing Miller to haul himself aboard, but tragedy strikes as Anna loses her grip and falls to her death.
Then comes the twist: Miller awakens, realizing the harrowing journey has been a dream. He races to the airport to meet a scientist, hoping to confirm a cure or explanation. But fate repeats itself when a military plane makes an emergency landing, echoing the film’s opening sequence and suggesting that the nightmare is far from over.
> "The Nightmare Becomes Reality" indeed.
