The Dead Pit (1989)
7/10
Amusingly trashy nightmare come alive.
15 April 2020
Fun insane zombie crossed mad doctor style late 80s low-budget horror with hazy atmospheric lighting of illuminating blues and an otherworldly music score sure to drive anyone crazy. Think along the lines of someone banging pots and in doing so, capturing the suffocating madness of the institute. One of those - forget about making sense of it too, as with little thought in its narrative and visuals, it's hellish abandonment throws everything at you, but the kitchen sink.

After a minor quake breaks a seal of a hidden tomb in the cellar of a mental hospital. A surgeon returns from the dead as a demonic figure (who can make his eyes glow red whenever he wants). Still dressed up in his scrubs, and making sure he's wearing rubber gloves (a hard to break habit I guess?). He goes about continuing his horrific experiments on the physical brain and its connection to the mind on the unknowing staff and patients. While also scarring, and constantly showing himself (even waving) to a new patient that suffers from amnesia and who spends quite lot of time wandering the corridors in a revealing attire (that comes to the forefront in one daft dream sequence), or simply freaking out. You can see why they casted Cheryl Lawson. Her character's amnesia and hypnosis sittings organized by the head doctor (Jeremy Slater who comes out the best of the lot) are a tool for a predictably contrived plot twist that shouldn't come as a surprise.

What did though was the excessive, delirious third act, as the surgeon's ghouls come out from a glowing green pit and go on a gory rampage tearing people apart. The special effects (miniature model sets) and makeup do provide some killer goodies at the backend, like open brain surgery and skin melting. Did the latter make sense, not really, but nothing does here.
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