{"id":6802,"date":"2024-10-25T11:21:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6802"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:21:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:21:32","slug":"the-dead-pit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/the-dead-pit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dead Pit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Dead Pit <\/strong>(1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Imperial Entertainment\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (Unrated Director\u2019s Cut- graphic violence, language, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brett Leonard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dan Wyman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Marty Collins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeremy Slate, Cheryl Lawson, Steffen Gregory Foster, Danny Gochnauer, Geha Getz, Joan Bechtel, Michael Jacobs, Mara Everett, Randall Fontana.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0When I think of The Dead Pit<\/strong>, the first thing that comes to mind is the VHS cover design. It had a button that made the zombie\u2019s 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\u2019s not too bad either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The best way to describe The Dead Pit<\/strong> is One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s 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\u2019t buying it. He shoots Ramzi dead, seals him in the basement with his numerous victims (piled in the pit) and doesn\u2019t breathe a word of it to anybody.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In present-day 1989, a young woman going by \u201cJane Doe\u201d (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\u2019s memory is through hypnosis. Perhaps it will help them get to the real cause of her memory loss.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the meantime, Jane starts having nightmares and visions of \u201cThe Surgeon\u201d. 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It 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\u2019re zombies who feast on brains. The final third of The Dead Pit<\/strong> 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\u2019s a total splatterfest!<\/p>\n

\u00a0My first piece of advice regarding The Dead Pit<\/strong> is to not think about it too closely. If you do, the plot holes start to show. It\u2019s never adequately explained how or when Jane lost her memory. Did it happen recently? It must have because surely she couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s hinted that she has a psychic connection to Ramzi. Scratch that, the connection is obvious from the start. Let\u2019s just say you don\u2019t need a degree in anything to figure it out. With a girl who can\u2019t remember her past, it can only be one thing. In any event, my point is to not overthink The Dead Pit<\/strong>. It\u2019s more fun if you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s plenty of cool stuff in The Dead Pit<\/strong> and I really don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What else does The Dead Pit<\/strong> have? Let\u2019s see. It has a head nurse, Kygar (Bechtel), who could easily be confused with Nurse Ratched. Her assistant (Everett) even resembles Pilbow from Cuckoo\u2019s Nest. The patients are a mixed bunch of nuts, but the one that stands out is Sister Clair (Getz), a \u201cnun\u201d who goes around sprinkling everybody with \u201choly water\u201d. There\u2019s a goodly amount of gore in The Dead Pit<\/strong> 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\u2019s window. There are also bloody corpses aplenty. The atmosphere is sufficiently eerie especially with the green-ish smoke around the zombies\u2019 feet. The score by Marty Wyman is creepy, mean and aggressive all at once.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay, so The Dead Pit<\/strong> is completely campy. You can\u2019t 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\u2019s a gory goof, but it\u2019s great. The only thing to do with The Dead Pit<\/strong> is sit back and let it happen. Don\u2019t try to make too much sense of it. Who knows, you might even enjoy it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dead Pit (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Imperial Entertainment\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (Unrated Director\u2019s Cut- graphic violence, language, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brett Leonard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dan Wyman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Marty Collins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeremy Slate, Cheryl Lawson, Steffen Gregory Foster, Danny Gochnauer, Geha Getz, Joan Bechtel, Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/The-Dead-Pit-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7234,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions\/7234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}