Dark Force Entertainment Tabs Aug. 25 For The Blu-ray Release Of The Dead Pit

Dark Force Entertainment, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new 2K scan — from the original camera negative — of director Brett Leonard’s 1989 debut film, The Dead Pit, which has been set for a first-time Blu-ray release on Aug. 25.

This unique spin on the undead begins with a prologue featuring Dr. Colin Ramzi (Danny Gochnauer), who works at a state-run nut house (if it looks familiar, this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was filmed) and has a secret basement torture chamber (aka: research lab).  

One night, Ramzi’s murderous experiments are discovered by Dr. Gerald Swan (played by Jeremy Slate — The Sons of Katie Elder, The Born Losers, Hell's Angels '69, etc.), who promptly kills his crazed colleague … and then calls the police, right?   That would be no.   Instead, he seals up Dr. Ramzi in his basement lair, with all of his victims, and moves on (exactly what kind of a nut house are we running here?).

We now come to modern times — 20 years later — and Dr. Swan continues to soldier on, although the once sprawling “mental health facility” has been downsized (you know, budget cuts, etc.).   

Enter “Jane Doe” (played by Cheryl Lawson — The Vineyard, Reckoning … but who has spent the bulk of her career as a stunt woman in such films as Poseidon, Ocean’s Eleven, The Scorpion King and more), who is found wandering the streets having lost her memory.  She is taken to “State Hospital,” which is Swan’s nut house.   

You are thinking about this time, why would you take an amnesiac to a mental hospital, well that’s the exactly the question that our “Jane Doe” asks … which means she hasn’t seen Catch-22.   Swan assures her that he can cure her and get her repressed memory back (all things considered our “Jane Doe” would rather wander the streets without her memory).

That is your set-up for The Dead Pit, a long-dead crazy doctor in the basement, an attractive young woman with no memory (who spends much of her time with little or nothing on) and Dr. Swan in charge.   Sure enough, “Jane Doe” appears to trigger the long-dormant lust of Dr. Ramzi, who rises from the undead, with his legion of zombies, and proceeds to work his way thought the hospital’s remaining staff (which genre fans will recognize as the “victim pool”).  

Bonus goodies include video sessions with actors Cheryl Lawson and Jeremy Slate, director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous) and writer/producer Gimel Everett.