The Evil in our Minds (And on Zombies) : The Dead Pit (1989)

The Dead Pit (1989)
Rating: **
Starring:  Jeremy Slate, Cheryl Lawson, Stephen Gregory Foster

Before I went gaga over slasher films, I was a zombie fanatic first.

I recall all those times I was so fascinated with these undead guys that I obsessively drew a lot of zombie designs. Those were good years, going for months eating chicken meat imagining them to be raw human flesh for immature fun (I was twelve. Deal with it) but due to my limited access on finding more zombie films, and the fact that I was a preteen boy whose allowances, when saved for a week, were just enough to buy just one VCD, my love for the sub-genre faded slightly until I was old enough to go to college. By then, I was craftier, spotting more ways to find my beloved movies and had my stroke of luck finding newer titles. Though, since I was a little older then, my perception of what makes a good horror movie changed, thus I was kinda critical to the majority of the zombie titles I managed to snag.

The Dead Pit (1989) was one title that I kept on track for some time and I was intrigued from the fact that I had a hard time looking for it. Back then, I was aware that the movie's a zombie flick but I never knew I would also find it under slashers as well, so my search for this title got more interesting but finding it proved to be a task. Fortunately, a copy of it showed up available for online streaming not too long then, so I took the opportunity to watch it and finally see this interesting looking title for the first time.

In The Dead Pit (1989), a doctor named Ramzi have been doing vile experiments on still living mental patients and another doctor named Swan, disgusted and stressed on keeping his mouth shut about the eerie on-goings, decided to put an end to Ramzi's madness. After shooting the mad doctor on the head, Swan walled in the Ramzi's entire secret room along with his body, hoping never to see any of this again.

Twenty years forward, an amnesiac girl dubbed Jane Doe gets found wandering the countryside and turned over by the courts to the same hospital Dr. Swan's still working at. The more they try to figure her out, however, the more Jane begins to dream about Dr. Ramzi, who seems to be returning back from the dead and letting her know all of this. The doctors first find her claims skeptical, but it isn't long before Ramzi does indeed come back as a vengeful homicidal undead after an earthquake breaks his resting place apart, bringing along an unholy legion of zombies which he controls.

I can't say I hated the film, but it does feel like it let down on some department, particularly the pacing and its direction; The Dead Pit (1989) focuses a lot on Jane Doe's torment around the first act as she struggles to understand her purpose and her reason for being being a clean slate. The way this is portrayed feels a tad too cheesy and exploited for my taste, with the casts being unlikable and cruel, and the movie slowing its pace with a lot of psycho-babble, all the while transitioning us with Jane repeated dreaming warnings about an undead doctor is coming back from the grave which, obviously, no one believes in until it's too late.

And speaking of, another drawback here would be the killer in question; nothing really too bad, it's just that after thirty minutes or so with nothing but sleazy brutality that would make a women-in-prison movie proud, I was expecting more from the main villain than just a one-liner spewing demon/zombie hybrid with glowing red eyes and a bullet wound on his head. With all his glorious zombie killer swag, you would be rooting that there's at least some backdrop on his goal but, no, he's simply evil because, well, evil, a factor that easily earned him the sudden ability to revive and control his dead patients, I guess. For a movie with a cool concept and a cool looking killer, the least it could do is make this maniac memorable personality-wise. 

I may sound very disappointed but, let me assure you, I'm not. At least not all the way; despite the sluggish flow, the one-dimensional characters and the plot being holey enough to rival a Swiss cheese, The Dead Pit (1989) wins with a wild card through special effects and some really cool zombie make-up. (Oh, and Cheryl Lawson being stripped naked via hose. I'm pretty some of you are into that) The zombie horde itself is fun enough to watch as they rip open heads and munch on them brains, and too seeing them fall into their own demise being melted with water. (Yes, it's the Neon Maniacs (1986)'s long lost second cousins from their mother's side. Twice removed.) Plus, with a cheese factor set fairly high and some cool Dario Argento-style cinematography, the movie will definitely have an audience.

Zombies in slasher films isn't entirely new as a gimmick; whether it'll be one undead killer (like our old boy Jason Voorhees in the latter Friday The 13th movies, or Stitches the clown from Stitches (2012)), or a bunch of them popping up as additional baddies (Mexico's Halloween mish-mash Cemetery of Terror (1985) as an example), the two sub-genres seem to mix well most of the time, but I guess it's inescapable to have some misfires. I may not appreciate The Dead Pit (1989) as a whole, but at least I can see effort and that has to count for something. Try it!

Bodycount:
1 male gets a lobotomy needle to the eye socket, scalp surgically cut open
1 male shot on the head
1 female gets a lobotomy needle to the eye socket, later seen with missing patches of flesh
1 male found with a dental drill on his eye
1 male strangled with belt
1 male had his skull crushed by zombies
1 male mauled by zombies
1 male missing, presumably killed
1 female had her skull crushed
1 male mauled by zombies
1 male seen dead
1 male had his scalp surgically cut open with bone saw and had needles ran into it
1 female missing, presumably killed
1 male immolated by bomb
Total: 14
(Note: Presumably a number of mental patients and staffs may have also been killed off during the zombie plague.)

I am your God!