MY CALL: For all its effort, this movie remains unimpressive and highly forgettable, even if somewhat entertaining. I just kept expecting it to get better… and it never did. This movie had a lot of untapped potential considering the films that director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity) helmed in the following years.. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Dead Pit: For more doctors behaving badly, check out Re-Animator (1985) and sequels, Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Dr. Giggles (1992), Boxing Helena (1993), or The House on Haunted Hill (1999).
At the State Institution for the Mentally Ill, the twisted Dr. Ramzi has been abducting patients and taking them down into a secret underground crypt beneath the hospital. Deep in these catacombs, he performed experiments on them and piled their cadavers into a foul pit. Upon discovery of these foul crimes against humanity, his superior Dr. Swan (Jeremy Slate; The Lawnmower Man) confronted Ramzi, shot him dead in his own pit, and then sealed the secret entrance from the world for 20 years.
The very day that amnesiac patient Jane Doe (Cheryl Lawson; The Vineyard) is admitted, an earthquake creates a fissure re-opening the cryptly basement and freeing the apparently still alive and now undead Dr. Ramzi to wreak havoc on the hospital once again. Oh, and for whatever reason, Jane has some sort of psychic connection to the hospital. No clue why. But the 80s did love psychic stuff in 80s movies.
When she’s dressed for bed (which is most scenes of this movie, it seems), Jane looks like the star of a softcore Penitentiary Girls movie. I think a producer must have liked her a little too much, because she always looks the instigator of a sex scene that never happens. And in that spirit, this movie features what I can only describe as a “mean-spirited” wet T-shirt contest scene. It is laughably raunchy, but clearly not meant to be funny either.
In the first half of the movie the gore is okay and the death scenes are completely forgettable. Like most 80s horror, the last third of the movie packs most of the punch. In the present case, the evil doctor resurrects his past patients as twitchy zombies with low budget zombie trappings that begin to ravage the hospital staff with weak zombie violence.
The deaths that ensue were very gory, even if on a very tight budget. But really, for all its effort, this movie remains unimpressive and highly forgettable, even if somewhat entertaining. I just kept expecting it to get better… and it never did. After all, evil doctor movies just open themselves up to crazy medical experiments and reanimated mania. I feel this movie had a lot of untapped potential. Especially considering the films that director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity) helmed in the following years.
