The Dead Pit (1989) Imperial Entertainment/Horror RT: 101 minutes No MPAA rating (Unrated Director’s Cut- graphic violence, language, brief nudity) Director: Brett Leonard Screenplay: Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett Music: Dan Wyman Cinematography: Marty Collins Release date: October 1989 (US) Cast: Jeremy Slate, Cheryl Lawson, Steffen Gregory Foster, Danny Gochnauer, Geha Getz, Joan Bechtel, Michael Jacobs, Mara Everett, Randall Fontana. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
When I think of The Dead Pit, the first thing that comes to mind is the VHS cover design. It had a button that made the zombie’s eyes glow when you pressed it. Although I was well past childhood when it hit video stores, I still thought it was neat. The movie’s not too bad either.
The best way to describe The Dead Pit is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets The Beyond. It takes place in a mental hospital where twenty years earlier (i.e. circa 1969), a mad doctor named Ramzi (Gochnauer) conducted gruesome experiments on patients in a basement with a pit. According to what he tells his colleague Dr. Swan (Slate, The Mini-Skirt Mob), he conquered life now he wants to conquer death. Swan isn’t buying it. He shoots Ramzi dead, seals him in the basement with his numerous victims (piled in the pit) and doesn’t breathe a word of it to anybody.
In present-day 1989, a young woman going by “Jane Doe” (sexy Cheryl Lawson) is brought to the still-functioning hospital with no idea who she is. Although labeled an amnesiac, she claims that somebody stole her memory. If only she could remember. Shortly after her arrival, an earthquake rocks the place freeing a reanimated Ramzi from his tomb. Swan (yes, he still works there!) decides the best way to jog Jane’s memory is through hypnosis. Perhaps it will help them get to the real cause of her memory loss.
In the meantime, Jane starts having nightmares and visions of “The Surgeon”. She sees him in the hallways and outside her window. Nobody else sees him, of course. Nurses, orderlies and other patients start disappearing. She knows something creepy is going on and it’s connected to the abandoned building with the clock tower. She plans to get to the bottom of it with the help of fellow patient Christian (Foster, The Lawnmower Man), a genial sort with a British accent and a habit of blowing stuff up.
It would seem that Ramzi did manage to conquer death after all. Not only is he walking around, so are all of his victims only now they’re zombies who feast on brains. The final third of The Dead Pit is an all-out zombie attack with the legion of the undead taking over the hospital and Swanny being confronted with the sins of his past. It’s a total splatterfest!
My first piece of advice regarding The Dead Pit is to not think about it too closely. If you do, the plot holes start to show. It’s never adequately explained how or when Jane lost her memory. Did it happen recently? It must have because surely she couldn’t have wandered around in her confused state for too long. Is it her presence that caused the earthquake that started the grisly chain of events? It’s hinted that she has a psychic connection to Ramzi. Scratch that, the connection is obvious from the start. Let’s just say you don’t need a degree in anything to figure it out. With a girl who can’t remember her past, it can only be one thing. In any event, my point is to not overthink The Dead Pit. It’s more fun if you don’t.
There’s plenty of cool stuff in The Dead Pit and I really don’t care if this statement makes me sound like a teenager. Watching it, I was magically transported back to the 80s when I lived on a fairly steady diet of B-movies of all genres. This is one of the better horror flicks that bypassed theaters and went straight to video stores. It has a lot of things I like. Lead actress Cheryl Lawson gets to run around in skimpy underwear a lot regardless of whether the scene calls for it or not. She’s also a pretty good scream queen actress. She screams a lot. Her lungs are her second best pair of assets. Slate is also quite good as the doctor who turns out to be anything but a hero. Gochnauer, sporting a cool pair of glowing red eyes post-resurrection, is creepy as the mad doctor-turned-mad zombie doctor.
What else does The Dead Pit have? Let’s see. It has a head nurse, Kygar (Bechtel), who could easily be confused with Nurse Ratched. Her assistant (Everett) even resembles Pilbow from Cuckoo’s Nest. The patients are a mixed bunch of nuts, but the one that stands out is Sister Clair (Getz), a “nun” who goes around sprinkling everybody with “holy water”. There’s a goodly amount of gore in The Dead Pit too. In addition to all the brain-related violence and munching, needles are inserted into eye sockets and a decapitated head is thrown against Jane’s window. There are also bloody corpses aplenty. The atmosphere is sufficiently eerie especially with the green-ish smoke around the zombies’ feet. The score by Marty Wyman is creepy, mean and aggressive all at once.
Okay, so The Dead Pit is completely campy. You can’t take it seriously at any point, especially the climax where water released from a nearby tower (how convenient) washes through a miniature of the clock tower building. The whole thing’s a gory goof, but it’s great. The only thing to do with The Dead Pit is sit back and let it happen. Don’t try to make too much sense of it. Who knows, you might even enjoy it.
