That was an excellent one.

So much average

best movie i've ever seen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I saw "The Dead Pit" first time some 15 years ago and since late at night on television. I couldn't remember the title until few years ago, and recently I manage to find it on DVD.Surprisingly magic is still there. Without getting too much into plot, movie is about doctor who performs illegal brain surgeries until his college kills him for moral reasons, sealing him into his "Dead Pit". Twenty years after, Jane Doe (girl who lost her memories) comes into the very same hospital. Soon after, earthquake crack the wall of "Dead Pit" and good old doctor comes back to life, unleashing his horde of undead.I don't know why many people complain about this movie, seems they are forgetting that this is '80 low budget movie (times when literally everything you thought of could be put on screen). It's a descent '80 zombie flick, bit unusual because of it's narrative style and nightmarish atmosphere it has. It was a first feature of now well known director Brett Leonard, who manage to capture otherworldly atmosphere in what is now considered cult classic. His obvious influences are Wes Craven and his Elm Street (director acknowledged this in audio commentary for Dead Pit DVD). Story gets bit spread here and there, but it never gets too confusing nor it tries to be more then it actually is - a low budget horror flick.Altho movie starts bit slow (but it has some nice scenes to keep you interested for the first half of the movie), it really comes to life in second half when all hell breaks lose and zombies start to rampage through asylum. Characters aren't deeply developed, but they are interesting enough to keep you watching at screen (good looking Cheryl Lawson helps in that department. Did I mention she walks around in her underwear most of the time?)SF goes from terrific to silly, but most of the time, they are looking quite good, especially when it comes to gore scenes. It's bloody and will satisfy every zombie fan, because FX here have all the necessary requirement for good zombie gorefest. Highlight of this little flick are cinematography, which was really well done and music score, which goes from moody to creepy. (Cheryl Lawson looks are also big highlight of this movie.)Bad: Some scenes are bit longer then they should be, some plot elements that aren't really needed and bit corny ending, and "innovative" way of killing zombies that might cause laugh for hardcore zombie fans.Overall, it's a descent flick, worth checking out if you are fan of horror movies and for some reason you haven't seen it already.

If you were a kid cruising the shelves of the video store throughout the horror section, I'm sure you came across the interactive video box of Brett Leonard's THE DEAD PIT, with the ghoul rising from a pit, a button you could push that made the fiend's eyes glow..those days were so cool because distributors put effort in their releases, finding innovative ways to market their products for the home video crowd. I never rented the movie at the time, but thanks to the fine folks at Code Red I was finally able to sit and watch THE DEAD PIT, provided uncut and in a proper transfer.The story-line is beyond bonkers and bizarre regarding this evil neurosurgeon(..based on the haunted recollections of director Leonard who based this guy on a neurosurgeon who was his mother's doctor(..his mom had brain cancer))who was shot point blank in the forehead by his colleague, Dr. Gerald Swan(Jeremy Slate)because of his diabolical transorbital lobotomies on asylum patients. Swan boards up the secret area where these procedures took place(..featuring a pit where the bodies of the dead patients were stored)along with the neurosurgeon's body and moves on with his life, burying the past away..that is until a new patient is brought to his institution twenty years later, an amnesiac, "Jane Doe"(Cheryl Lawson)who might just have some kind of connection with the dead neurosurgeon. An earthquake of heavy magnitude opens the boarded secret room and the neurosurgeon rises from his pit to gather up new victims, nurses and patients of Swan's, while also terrorizing Jane in the process. Jane befriends a relatively sane patient, Chris Meyers(Stephen Gregory Foster), in the institution as punishment for his activities as a dangerous bomb expert! Funny how this unique ability will come in handy at a later point in the film! While the killer neurosurgeon ghoul moves across the grounds at night collecting his new victims, Swan attempts to unlock the repressed memories of Jane to establish just who she is, and how she might relate to Ramzi(Danny Gocknauer), explaining to us why this menacing bastard haunts her so.I think THE DEAD PIT achieves in certain areas, while it suffers in others..despite an incoherent plot and many gaping holes, Brett Leonard's debut feature has very impressive make-up / prosthetic effects, with stunning camera work(..photographed by Marty Collins), & striking use of color and light(..blue and green, in particular). When it becomes a certified zombie film with past patients of Ramzi's rising from the green-glowing pit, blood-soaked, many featuring open wounds, THE DEAD PIT is sure to win the hearts of undead genre fans everywhere. These zombies are the things of nightmares and the way they are shot, using back light which introduces them often in the form of shadowed silhouettes, accompanied by misty fog, marching towards potential victims, is quite visually arresting. The interesting marriage of asylum and zombie genres enhances THE DEAD PIT, I believe, and the setting of a former mental institution, Agnews Developmental Center(..certain areas falling apart while the more sound buildings produce just as much disturbing ambiance)provides a really spooky aesthetic that should be pleasing to the eyes of horror fans. Cheryl Lawson, as Jane Doe, services the movie as major eye candy, a short T-shirt and panties her wardrobe for most of the screen time. Some phenomenally gruesome gore(..it's a testament to the f/x wizards to achieve such work under the tight budgetary constraints) includes heads opened revealing brains(..including one nifty sequence where Ramzi uses needles to purposely cause certain sensations to a victim, inserting them into an exposed brain, while also jamming picks into faces, causing immediate lobotomy right on the spot, surprising certain victims who were caught off-guard by the demented psychopath). There are also some really cool melting effects(..always a major plus to me)featuring faces deteriorating into skeletal remains. Ramzi's glowing red eyes are a bit too much, perhaps eliciting unintentional laughs instead of fright, and throughout the forehead bullet hole remains an eyesore / distraction. And, the inclusion of "blessed holy water" as a means to possibly defeat Ramzi, is a bit goofy, particularly when the one blessing it is a patient pretending to be a nun! Still, as a low budget shocker, I think THE DEAD PIT is a success and has much to offer horror fans who can drown out the film's many deficiencies, appreciating the atmosphere and wicked visceral aspects.

Confident direction and a good deal of atmosphere cannot disguise the fact that The Dead Pit, the debut from director Brett Leonard, makes very little sense. The film's confusing narrative sees a beautiful young amnesiac experiencing a series of horrifying hallucinations and nightmares whilst staying at an institution for the mentally ill. But what the poor girl doesn't realise is that the bloody surgeon that is haunting her dreams is actually real, the reanimated spirit of a murderous doctor who was walled up in the asylum basement twenty years earlier. Freed by a recent earthquake, the nasty doc is out to complete his gory experiments whilst seeking revenge on the psychiatrist who entombed him.Quite how the malevolent doc is able to return to life is never adequately explained; neither is what he is trying to achieve with his messy work, or how he manages to remain invisible to everyone but Jane (the identity chosen by our forgetful heroine), And with far too many contrivances necessary to wrap the whole affair up tidily for the finalé, the film is just too far-fetched for its own good.The silly ending expects the viewer to suspend belief as it reveals that a) the killer surgeon is actually Jane's father b) the surgeon is able to command an army of zombies c) the zombies can only be destroyed with holy water d) a huge water tower stands over the asylum e) one of the patients is a demolition expert f) another is a nun and knows how to consecrate water, and g) the raw materials for a bomb can be found in the asylum's workshop!!! It doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going to happen, or to realise that such a string of coincidences are astronomically unlikely (that's the understatement of the century).On a positive note, lead actress Cheryl Lawson is very tasty and spends much of the film running around in a pair of white panties and a cropped T-shirt so flimsy that in one scene it is torn from her body by water from a hose. Leonard also sees fit to include some fairly decent gore to liven things up a little, but the gratuitous female flesh and bloody effects still aren't enough to detract from the lousy storytelling.Director Leonard would go on to have some success with his Stephen King adaptation The Lawnmower Man, but his career seems to have gone into a nosedive recently after giving sci-fi fans what is reputed to be the worst of the Highlander franchise (and boy, it must be really bad to stink more than the second one!).

This is not going to be a surprise, but here we have yet another horror movie that had potential, but in the end just cannot deliver all the goods. It has a semi decent story, but there are to many plot holes and unanswered questions. There are zombies in the movie, however, for the most part they are confined to the end. The movie also feels longer than its hour and a half runtime. I mean I just watched the movie "Inferno" and according to its runtime it is over ten minutes longer, but it felt a lot shorter. To the story, it starts out with a confrontation between two doctors at the dead pit of the title. One of the doctors is a tad insane and seemingly doing random experiments with the patients at this insane asylum. Well the one doctor shoots this doctor and instead of reporting the happenings to the authorities he seals the now dead crazy doctor in the basement of this building and you are thinking "why didn't he go to the police"? Because if he did there would not be much of a movie now would there silly. Flash years later and the place is running again and a new patient who is calling herself Jane Doe because of memory loss seems to spark a return of our good doctor from the basement. He is soon out beginning his experiments again with his sights set on revenge of the man who killed him. So that is how the movie progresses, for a bit there I was worried there would not be much time for the zombie attack at the end and that it would be just a small pointless scene, however, I just think the rest of the movie dragged to much because the zombie scene at the end is a bit good. On the whole if this movie was just paced better and they got to the zombies quicker it would have been better, but as it is it is a not all that bad, not all that good movie.