| “ | It's not a bad question, Burt. | „ |
| ~ Frank to Burt after Freddy asks how do one kill something that's already dead |
Frank Johnson was a protagonist in The Return of the Living Dead. He was portrayed by James Karen.
Plot[]
Frank worked at the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse in Louisville, KY with Freddy and Burt. In an attempt to show off to the younger co-worker, He tells him the events of "Night of the Living Dead" were mostly real events, and that they have one of the zombies downstairs (He believed the body only had convulsions, and wasn't hostile.)
After showing the canister to Freddy, Freddy (quite smartly) asks how they know the corpse can't escape, to which Frank states the canister was sealed by the Army Corps of Engineers and smacks the side of the canister, believing that the weld would hold. The canister ruptures and it's zombie-creating Trioxin 245 gas escapes. Frank and Freddy are rendered unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time while intact cadavers in the warehouse reanimate. Luckily this is just one body in cold-storage, and the zombie in the container with the gas. They wake with headaches and return to the storeroom upstairs, where they encounter the cadaver from cold-storage. After Burt arrives back at the warehouse, the trio successfully subdue the zombie with a fire axe to the head (which to their horror, does not actually kill it) and dismember him.
The trio are seen by Freddy's pals hauling trash bags containing the (still quite agitated) Zombie to the nearby Funeral Home of Burt's friend, Ernie so they can incinerate it. Frank isn't impressed by Ernie's skill, and states that he knows how to operate the Crematorium's incinerator. The fumes from the burnt corpse escape into the air, causing a downpour infused with trioxin, which reanimates most of the bodies in the nearby cemetery.
The next time we see the trio they are being examined by medical personnel due to looking pale and sickly. the examination shows they have pooling blood in their lower extremities and severe cramping, (symptoms of rigor Mortis setting in) as well as no heartbeat. This reveals the two workers to be dead (They actually died when the trioxin gas escaped, which kept them from getting eaten by "the Tarman"), and doomed to turn into zombies. Rather than have this happen, he decides to incinerate himself in Ernie's crematorium.