The Dead Pit

Brett Leonard

1988

This film isn't really a true zombie film but makes it into this section due to the last half hour of the film being a total zombie rampage! It concerns a mental institution where a mad doctor is carrying out sick experiments on and then murdering it's inmates. Dumping the bodies into "the dead pit". One of his colleagues finds out and ends up shooting him dead. Fearing for his own career he decides to cover the incident up and blocks off the door. Twenty one years later an a young girl is admitted with total memory loss, and soon after an earthquake erupts. It's not long before strange events start occurring, are these happenings somehow linked to the young girl? 

Very stylishly directed with some beautifully shot sequences inside the hospital, the use of the camera following the running characters in the film is over done though. For a spell in the film every other scene seems to be this! The camera speeding along just behind or in front of the victims at sprinting speed. This is very effective the first couple of times but after a while they're flogging a dead horse. Other than that it's not a bad film at all, with a decent quota of bloody scenes for a UK release, it's not noticeably cut and the BBFC site states passed "uncut" so it must have been cut by the distributors before submission if it is indeed cut. Even stranger is the fact that the R-rated release in the USA has a stated running time of only 95min ?? Can anyone clarify this one??

This is certainly worth a look for any Zombie fans out there as the last section of the film has plenty of them running around removing peoples brains and holding them aloft. No classic but recommended nonetheless.

Extras

As DVD goes this is pretty poor. Picture and sound are average. No extras at all.