2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

GL84 Found wandering the streets, a woman is admitted to a mental health facility where she refutes her case of amnesia and begins to have crazy nightmares about a former doctor who practiced medical experiments to reanimate the dead and must race to stop him unleash a horde of undead into our world.This here is one of the very best 80s cheesefests ever made. One of the main reasons for that is the rather great story to this, as there's much more to this one than what's expected. The fact that it throws in much more than normal, from the nightmarish dreams to the therapy sessions and her connection to the doctor's past through the flash visions that pop up, this one does manage to stay interesting for the seemingly disparate story elements are nicely woven together into a rich story that has a lot of twists and turns to keep it going. When it hits the second half, there's as much goodness from the action as the first half, which includes the zombie massacre on the staff and patients that offers up some great moments, and there's also the big scenes in the basement of the facility where all the zombies are kept and operated on. There's also the greatness of the finale where the film goes for a larger scale than expected and really makes this fun as there's some solid chasing around the abandoned buildings as well as the complete destruction of a water tower and the resulting flood it unleashes manages to employ some nice action into the proceedings to make it come to an end. The other really big part of this is that there's so much bloodshed in the film. This is incredibly bloody, packed with loads of gore and messy features as there's literally no end to the ripped off limbs, a lobotomy pick through the eyes, scores of decapitations, brain surgeries and really great gunshots to the head. Even the dead are bloody, full of wounds, all slimy and blood-streaked, many of them bald in spotted and mildewed hospital gowns as they shuffle and stutter their way to wreak havoc. There are many great scenes of them coming for the main characters lit from behind in an awesome setting which just makes them that much more impressive-looking. Alongside the mental hospital setting, which is completely creepy, offers up some unnerving atmosphere and just gives the whole thing a really uneasy feeling, these here are what make the film worthwhile as it doesn't have a whole lot of flaws to it. The main one is that the plot is rather hard to get into. There's a lot of things going on in here, from the amnesia victim to the past relationship that's remained hidden and the rather clichéd manner in which it all manages to occur at the end, and while all of these make the film feel smart, trying to piece together the way it all unfolds is just plain exhausting. Worse is the whole cliché spook of the main character that can only see the main villain's ridiculous vanishing act ploy, as there's not a lot of them, but what they lack in number they make up for in groaning ability. Otherwise, there isn't much wrong with this one.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.

Paul Magne Haakonsen I happened to fall over "The Dead Pit" in a secondhand store that deals in movies and music close to where I live, and the zombie on the DVD cover made me curious, so I picked it up, being a zombie aficionado, of course I had to.And as I came home and watched this, I was not at all amused or entertained in the least. This movie, despite being from 1989 (not that there is anything wrong with old movies), just failed to scare or entertain in any possible way. And I do think that even back in 1989, this movie wouldn't have been considered anything even remotely to being scary.I was hoping to see more zombies, but ended up with a doctor who was shot in the head, then returned from the dead with these wonderfully red glowing eyes, and a pit full of "zombies" - who were essentially just regular people with really bad make-up jobs.The storyline was fairly straight forward, and fairly average for a horror movie from that particular time of age. If you, like me, have grown up watching horror movies in the 80's, then you will know exactly what I mean - as this is the essence of late 80's horror movie. I am regarding this in the sense of plot, execution and characters.You might find some enjoyment in the movie if you are a fan of Jeremy Slate or Cheryl Lawson - providing you even know who these people are to begin with.For a zombie movie, then "The Dead Pit" is a massive disappointment, and you'd best stay clear of this unless you have absolutely nothing else to watch. There are far better horror movies from the late 80's that surpass this movie by a mile and beyond.

Coventry "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!

Tikkin It's a few months since I watched this, but from what I remember I found it to be fairly entertaining and unique, with a large dose of cheese thrown in. The gore comes in more towards the end and there's a great scene where one of the nurses is in a bathroom holding what appears to be a heart that she's been munching on. The best parts in The Dead Pit are mostly towards the end, when the zombies break loose. Everything throughout the film is building up to this point. We also get some hilarious lines such as "I didn't lose my mind, it was taken from me!" All horror and zombie fans should give this a watch. It's not perfect, but is unique enough to make it worth a watch at least once.