"The Dead Pit" offers a grim & chilling atmosphere, sublime settings and some of the most exhilarating gore effects I've ever seen, and yet... it's all ruined by truly amateurish production values and incompetent acting performances. What a crying shame, as Brett Leonard's ("Feed", "Hideaway") debut easily could have been one of the late 80's most grueling horror accomplishments, with its disturbingly gloom psychiatric clinic setting and the fairly unique 'zombifying' process that involves scalping people and sticking needles in their exposed brains. When you watch many independent low-budget horror flicks, you tend to get used to bad acting and lousy editing jobs, but it becomes a lot more difficult to overlook when the story actually has such great potential. Then you're just left behind with feelings of disappointment and anger. This film would have been a lot better if everyone with the exception of Jeremy Slate just kept their mouths shut and focused more on the blood-soaked zombies that come crawling out of the eerie pit in the asylum's secret basement. The living dead are experiment cases of the gifted Dr. Colin Ramzi, who went a little ballistic in his search for discovering the medical causes of insanity. His former partner Dr. Swan killed him and walled him up underneath the asylum but now, twenty years later, the arrival of a mysteriously amnesic girl and a heavy earthquake brought him back and he's more satanic than he ever was. The plot makes no sense and it's full of holes, but it's a really creepy film that features absolutely no comic reliefs or sympathetic characters. The good characters (like the innocent young nurse) are slaughtered just as relentlessly as the wicked ones, and you shouldn't root for a happy ending, either! The odd music contributes to the unsettling atmosphere as well and that abandoned dark hospital building is honestly one of the creepiest horror setting in history. One sequence in particular, when Dr. Ramzi is standing over the pit with his arms spread whilst an army of undead souls emerges, is vintage 80's terror in my humble opinion. But now let's rant a little about the negative elements. They show right away, with the ineptly edited opening credits! The whole history between Dr. Swan and Dr. Ramzi gets constantly intercut with credits, which looks very amateurish and overly interrupts the pace. The clumsy editing remains the main problem throughout the entire film, as relocations are always indicated by stagnant images of a full moon. That one same shot of the moon must feature in the film for a total of 15 times or something. Most of the acting performances are just hopeless, especially Stephen Foster as the heroic male lead and Danny Gochnauer as the malicious, flashy red-eyed zombie doctor. His character should have just been a silent one. Cheryl Lawson isn't the world's greatest actress neither, but at least she looks nice and walks around scarcely dressed most of the time. Those are very nice undies you're wearing, Cheryl... And a sexy top, too!
Review of The Dead Pit
