The Dead Pit

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The dead Deadly Doctor is in.
"I've done life; now I'm doing death."
—Dr. Ramzi

The Dead Pit is 1989 low-budget horror film, which was directed by Brett Leonard[1].

The movie starts with showing the Big Bad Dr. Ramzi, head surgeon of a mental hospital, taking patients and conducting cruel brain surgery experiments on them underneath the hospital's clocktower. He is confronted by his coworker Dr. Swan and is promptly shot. Swan, fearing for his career, seals the place and swears to keep the whole thing to himself.

Cut to twenty years later. Amnesiac woman "Jane Doe" arrives at the hospital. Her presence causes an earthquake and resulting tremors break the seal to Dr. Ramzi's lair, who now returns from the dead to exact revenge.

Tropes used in The Dead Pit include:
  • Abandoned Hospital: The empty hospital wings.
  • Brain Food: Averted. The zombies do go for the brains, but they just seem to play with them instead of eating them.
  • Clock Tower: The center of the bad things happening on the hospital grounds.
  • Creepy Basement: Under the clocktower.
  • Deadly Doctor: Dr. Ramzi.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: Dr. Ramzi's past victims come back to life for the final third of the film.
  • Eye Scream: One of the patients is found with a dentist drill jammed into his eye.
  • Fainting: Jane faints when Dr. Ramzi catches her.
  • Fan Service: Jane's nightmare where she is caught by nurse Kygar who hoses her top off.
  • Final Girl: Jane.
  • Flashback Echo: Jane starts having flashbacks when she starts climbing up a watertower.
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: The ominous tolling of hospital's clocktower is featured throughout the movie.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Dr. Swan is drove to boozing after he hears Jane describing Dr. Ramzi when she's under hypnosis.
  • Immune to Bullets: The undead.
  • Kill It with Water: The zombies melt on contact with holy water. Good thing that the local crazy nun patient is present to bless some.
  • Laughing Mad: First person we seen in the film is a mental patient doing this.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Surprise surprise, Dr. Ramzi turns out to be Janes' father.
  • Mad Bomber: Chris caught on it due to his work in the army and is a patient because of it. It comes handy later.
  • Menacing Stroll: Ramzi's pace when he is chasing Jane in the clocktower.
  • Neck Lift: Ramzi does this to one of his unwilling test subjects in the opening sequence.
  • Nightmare Dreams: Every night Jane spends in the hospital is filled with nightmares.
  • Not Using the Z Word: Averted, Chris uses the word "zombies" when he tries to make some sense to the situation with Jane and Dr. Swan.
  • Off with His Head: Waking up at night, Jane gets up from her bed and sees Ramzi outside her window holding a severed head of one of the orderlies.

"I'm the head surgeon."

  1. ↑ (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, Man-Thing and Highlander the Source)
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