The Dead Pit (1989)

Episode 474, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig; And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this week I chose the movie and I have this. List of movies that I’ve just always wanted to see. Things that I used to see on the shelves at the video store were more, nothing more than the cover really piqued my interest, and I just thought I’d try to plow us through some of those this year because they’re just nagging at the back of my head.

And this one has been nagging at the back of my head because the video sleeve was so unique. On the shelf. It was like a zombie kind of coming outta the grave. It said the dead pit and the zombie’s eyes were two little green LED lights that if you pressed like just if you pressed on a certain spot on the cover, they would light up and flash.

Do you remember this at all? 

Craig: No, but oh, the things we were impressed with in those times. I 

Todd: know well. Back in those days, LED lights weren’t so ubiquitous either. I mean, like they had like red ones and they had green ones and I think that was it. And now LED lights are used for everything. But back then they just had a very limited function.

They were just those tiny little things I guess, you know, some little watch battery in there would keep that going for a while. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: But, uh, pretty gimmicky way to have your. Your sleeves stand out on the shelf. 

Craig: Yeah, 

Todd: because obviously this was made for the video market, you know, from the very beginning.

So it’s got like two posters. It’s got this one poster that’s got like this, the, that’s the one you see on IMDB, which is a, a woman who looks like she’s hanging like in torture position with a halter top and a some white underwear on over, like a pit of zombies who were coming outta the grave. I never saw that one.

I just saw the one with a zombie with the light up eyes, and that was enough for me. I apparently wasn’t enough for me to pick it up when I was a kid. Unfortunately, this is the first time I’ve ever seen it. I assume the first time you’ve ever seen this also, huh? 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t have any memory of this. I, I don’t remember that.

LightUp case. I, I don’t recall having ever heard of this movie, but it’s, I don’t know. I mean, I just looked, I just finished watching it and I was just looking at the uh, IMDB tab on my computer, and it’s from 1989 and the last movie that we did, the Snake Hand Movie Curse two was also from 1989. And they have a lot of things in common, but ultimately I liked that one a lot better.

So I’m interested to see what you thought of this one. 

Todd: Yeah. This one, you know, had a lot in common with some other movies we’ve seen too. I don’t know why. I just kept getting flashes of bad dreams, which we did fairly recently. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: You remember that one? 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Again, takes place in a mental institution.

You girl kind of seeing visions and she’s got this like history that she’s gotta unpack. 

Craig: Yes. It was very much like that. 

Todd: Yeah. And so like, I meant to go back and look. Maybe I should right now. When was Bad Dreams released? 

Craig: I don’t remember. But yeah, 

Todd: they couldn’t have been too far off from this, 

Craig: but, but that movie was derivative of 

Todd: Nightmare.

Elm Street. 

Craig: Nightmare Elm, yeah. Uh, dream Warriors 

Todd: 1980. The year before this, 

Craig: there are just so many movies like this set in mental institutions, and of course it’s the movie Stereotypical Mental Institution with, 

Todd: oh God, 

Craig: people, people bumbling around acting like acting crazy, like, 

Todd: yeah. 

Craig: I think that most people that struggle with their mental health don’t.

Act like that. 

Todd: I mean, and could you imagine an institution where like, it would be chaos if you just have like a big open room and everybody in there is just one step away from like killing somebody really is what, 

Craig: but it’s typical. It’s so typical and, and the plot is typical. Like you said, you know, a, a pretty girl with a past and you know, a mysterious past and.

Zombies I like.

Todd: I wasn’t expecting the zombies. Well, I mean, I kind of was expecting the zombies ’cause I had seen the cover. But as it was going on, I thought, well, when the zombies gonna come into play, I guess that pit of dead is gonna, it’s gonna come to life and it didn’t disappoint. 

Craig: The zombie part of it is a lot like gies.

We did Gies, right? Did we do gies? Yep. 

Todd: Yeah, we did. 

Craig: In this case, it’s a doctor, but like he’s like a crazy doctor and he’s bringing people, he’s turning people into zombies for reasons that are completely unexplained, at least as far as I’m concerned. Like it’s just that he’s crazy. I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That’s one of the things that frustrated me about this movie is. Who is this guy? Why is he doing this? What is his end goal? What is the nature of these things like, because he was just doing like experiments on them or something, and then all of a sudden there’s zombies everywhere and. Ugh. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, it’s very nebulous, you know?

It’s, it’s what? It’s kind of weird because the way it starts out, and, and I, by the way, one thing I did like about this movie, I thought it was shot really well. 

Clip: Mm. 

Todd: I thought like it had mood, like, I mean, well, if you’re going for a particular look, which is that eighties dreamlike quality where everything is kind of extreme, right?

Clip: Yeah. 

Todd: The angles were pretty extreme. The lighting was that very extreme lighting and which is good because it kept the hospital interesting. You know, there’s lots of blues and reds coming in through windows with the shades drawn or the blinds, you know, casting patterns over things. And the mood lighting was just great.

And then, you know, the camera was doing some interesting things like can levered angles and really interesting angles. At times I thought that, you know, it, it, it didn’t feel like. A lot of the low budget movies that we see, 

Craig: I guess, I don’t know. 

Todd: It had higher production value. 

Craig: Uh, I don’t know if I’d go that far.

I mean there was some really this guy, this is this guy’s first movie. I didn’t even write down his name. What is his name? The director 

Todd: Brett Leonard. 

Craig: Brett Leonard. This was his first movie and then he went on to do a couple of movies that I had seen. Virtuosity. 

Todd: The Lawnmower Man, you remember that weird movie?

Craig: The Lawnmower Man? Yeah. And the Lawnmower Man was good and ultimately isn’t a very good movie, but it was really innovative. Like it was making use of computer animation stuff that was. Brand new. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And at the time it seemed really, really cool. So it’s not that I don’t think that this guy has some skill as a director.

I do. I I really liked all the outdoor stuff. 

Todd: Hmm. 

Craig: It was filmed, I don’t know, in California somewhere on this, I’m just gonna say campus, it’s not a school campus, but like a campus was, you know, multiple buildings and like a, a huge water tower and stuff and 

Todd: mm-hmm. 

Craig: There are a lot of long shots. Outdoors and at night and I thought for night shooting it was good.

And I get like, there are parts you mentioned that, you know, they do some interesting things with lighting. There’s, there’s a scene at the end, near the end that looks like they ripped it kind of right out of either thriller or that a night of 

Todd: return to the living dead like part two. 

Craig: Yeah, like night of the Living Dead.

But also what’s the one where there’s like, I don’t think there’s zombies or demons in that movie theater. 

Todd: Oh, demons. 

Craig: Demons, but you, it’s the classic thing where like, you know, you’ve got these zombies or demons or whatever that are lit entirely with a very bright light from the back. So, right. You know, it’s just these beams of light and them in silhouette, you know, moving slowly and strangely.

It’s just, it nothing about it felt. And we really should, you know, get more into the plot. But nothing about it felt fresh to me. No. Everything felt like a rehash of something else. 

Todd: Well, that’s true. I mean, but a lot of these movies do feel that way ’cause they’re all pretty derivative of each other. 

Craig: Not good ones though.

Todd: But you’re right, they’re these very specific things, I think is what you’re talking about. I mean, even the tail, even though the last bit with the water tower and the zombies kind of in that, in that space, was also bringing me back to a return of the living dead too. Which also came out the year before this.

You remember there was a kind of a climactic scene went down very similarly. I think it was a water tower, I think it was a sign. And some similar type area where they were trying to set a trap for the zombies. In that case, it was electricity. I just kept getting all these flashes to other movies while we were watching this and, uh, 

Craig: and, and some of it is so blatant that it just has to be intentional.

Like there is major Michael Meyer stuff going on, like the. Maine villain is Michael Michael Myers. In this girl, the whole movie, she looks out a window and he is just standing there staring at her menacingly, and then she looks away and she looks back and he is gone. That’s true. She, she’s constantly seeing him out windows just standing there staring at her like he’s just Michael Myers creeping on her for three quarters of the movie.

My other major complaint about this movie is that it is far too long. Yeah, far too long. I swear to God. I was, I, I started watching it last night and I was like, oh my God, is it still going? Uh, and then it finally got to the scene. I’m like, oh, finally, here’s the big, you know, the, the chase at the end.

Thank God we’re finally there. And I paused it and there was still 40 minutes left. It’s like, what? 

Todd: Yeah. Well, and that is partly because I think the scenes themselves go on very long. The whole credit sequence is they’re chewing the scenery through the whole thing. You got this extreme mood lighting.

They’re in this mental hospital. This guy walks in on a dude who’s in solitary confinement and pulls a big pick out and I guess kind of lobotomize, 

Craig: right? 

Todd: Lobotomize him right through the eye. Yes. Drags him away over his shoulder. Goes into some secret passageway in a closet somewhere. And then the dude, there was some other doctor who he had been briefly talking to who said 

Craig: something like, I called them good doctor and bad doctor, even though neither one of them is really good.

But 

Todd: yeah, 

Craig: that was the only way that there’s good doctor and bad doctor and the only, they’re the only two doctors in the movie. 

Todd: I never figured out who bad doctor’s name was, but 

Craig: Colin, something 

Todd: good, doctor is Dr. Swan, 

Clip: I can’t cover up for you any longer, Colin. Whatever you’re doing to them has to stop.

Are you going to stop me, Joe? I don’t know you anymore. You never did, 

Todd: but he didn’t even know exactly how far he was going. Apparently he was never that curious before he just heard wind of it or something. Because at this point he decides to follow this guy because he sees like a blood trail or something on the floor.

Yeah. And that leads him to the secret door, which leads him to this insane spiral staircase that looks like he goes a hundred feet underground. 

Craig: Uhhuh. Uh 

Todd: uh uh, I kept thinking, where do you think they shot this? Was this in like. A grain silo or something like where 

Clip: would they find, 

Todd: I 

Clip: know it’s really tall, spiral stick.

Craig: It was probably one story worth of stairway that they just shot over and over again, making it look like it was super long. I don’t know. Who knows? 

Todd: It could be, but what was super long was the time. I mean, oh my God. Then he goes down the staircase and he is looking around and then he goes into this. It looks like a dungeon from an old Vincent Price movie.

Yeah, 

Craig: yeah. And there’s like Skull. Yeah, there’s like skulls on the floor. And that patient that the guy. Lobotomized or whatever is on a table and he’s got symbols carved into his torso. I don’t have any idea what that’s about at all. That didn’t pay off, 

Todd: did it? 

Craig: What the hell? No. And then his, his head is open, like his skull has been surgically cut into and spread apart, and his brain is exposed and there’s a ton of bodies and good doctors like my.

God, man, you’re a doctor. You’re supposed to be saving lives and bad. Doctor says, I’ve done life, now I’m doing death. 

Todd: I loved this exchange. Oh man. 

Craig: Oh boy. 

Todd: But I was into it at that point. I’m like, all right, we got heavy, cheesy drama. You know, this is gonna be a little campy. You know? It’s pretty campy, the doctors, but, and so then like he approaches him and then for some reason.

Good doctor has a gun. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: What does he just pack a gun with him all the time in this hospital, 

Craig: I guess. 

Todd: But he whips his gun out and the guy says, you can’t kill me. And he shoots him in the middle of the head, right in the forehead and apparently does kill him, and then runs upstairs, nails everything up, plasterers over the doorway.

And then we get this like ridiculously drawn title with cackling over it. The dead pit. 

Craig: I know, that was so weird. 

Todd: I wondered if that was just like a later edition or something. 

Craig: Well, that weird. I mean, the, the laughter comes in later, like the zombies or whatever they are. I don’t know what they are. He.

Kills people and they come back kind of as laughing zombies. 

Todd: Oh, they’re always cackling. 

Craig: There’s also, eventually, God, I know I’m jumping all over the place, but eventually there’s like hundreds of them. Where did they all come from? 

Todd: I know they all came from the dead pit, Craig. Oh, 

Craig: the dead pit. Yeah, the dead pit At, at the bottom of the spiral stairway.

Todd: You just imagine how, how long this guy, this young doctor must have worked at this hospital to disappear hundreds of people without. Raising any alarm, 

Craig: whatever, 

Todd: bearing him in this pit. The pit’s full of bodies. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s full of bodies. And now it’s 20 years later and good doctor still works there. We don’t find that out for a second, but he does.

And I also feel like. He says something later in the movie when he at the like super, super, super late in the movie, he dumps some exposition that doesn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t already know. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And really doesn’t explain anything. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: He starts it by saying something like, man, I haven’t thought about that for 20 years.

I’m like, bro, it just happened 20 years ago. You shot a guy in the head. He was like conducting evil experiments in the basement and you just haven’t thought about it in 20 years. He 

Todd: put 

Craig: it 

Todd: out of his mind immediately afterwards. This guy is great at compartmentalization. This guy is an avoidant to a T.

Craig: He just, he just put it, he put it behind him and was done with it. 

Todd: Life goes on. 

Craig: Okay. So anyway, so new women. At first I thought this was just a women’s hospital, but it’s not. It’s, there’s just men and women in the same ward, all of them. Insane. Apparently this young, gorgeous soap opera looking woman gets admitted, but she has amnesia.

So her name is Jane Doe. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: she says, I don’t remember. She says it 150 times in the movie, but she tells us that she didn’t lose her memory. It was taken from her. Somebody took it? 

Todd: Yeah. Somebody took it from her, which it, then she gets explicit later about how she was on an operating table and they did something to pull her memories out.

Craig: I, I swear to God, she says it 20 times. Oh. And she’ll, she’ll say things like, remember how I told you that I believe that I don’t have amnesia, but that somebody took my memories? Remember that how I told you that five or six times before? 

Todd: Just to be sure. This is Cheryl Lawson and, uh, this was her first big role.

She did a few things after this. She was in virtuosity. I don’t think she was a big character in virtuosity. She’s in a couple other movies after this, but didn’t really do much. But as a stunt woman, she did quite a bit during the nineties and early two thousands. 

Craig: She’s very pretty. She’s not a very good actress.

Todd: No, she’s probably better as a stunt woman. 

Craig: Yeah. The, I mean, the, the writing isn’t great and her character is kind of, I don’t know, whatever. I mean, I guess she’s the heroine or whatever, but she’s not particularly likable. Like, I’m not really rooting for anybody in this. I don’t really care. 

Todd: Wow. 

Craig: But, uh, she’s basically just kind of hysterical throughout most of the movie.

And it gets old like, Ugh, God, calm down. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, she cries a lot. She’ll burst into tears and get a little hysterical on a whim. 

Craig: And then is there a, a supernatural earthquake? Does Jane have something to do with the earthquake? Like 

Todd: I 

Craig: think 

Todd: she 

Craig: does her breakthrough, like cause an earthquake or something?

Todd: I think what we’re led to believe is that this woman coincidentally got assigned to this hospital. Where she has this past connection to, and she also has some kind of psychic ability that’s latent and that awakens it when she comes in and she triggers the earthquake. Now, that is really just my supposition.

There’s nothing that ever explains that, 

Craig: right? 

Todd: They discuss the earthquake, but. The doctor Swan kind of dismisses the idea of what caused it, because he’s like, well, the earthquake’s not important ’cause that’s physical and we’re talking about supernatural occurrences. But it broke the seal on something, some seal somewhere, it broke.

And that’s the issue. 

Craig: Yeah. And the board, the boarded up door opens and glows green. It, it, it co It’s always, the dead pit is always glowing green from 

Todd: this. Yeah. And I like that. It’s very thriller. 

Craig: I think during the earthquake or immediately after, like she’s on the ward floor, like in the common area and she’s freaking out and she’s like, they need help.

The people in the cellar need help. Let them out. 

Todd: And I expected, she says this to Dr. Swan and I expected Dr. Swan to like have a vis visceral reaction to this, but he doesn’t at all. 

Craig: I mean, he hasn’t thought about it in 20 years. 

Todd: Yeah, I guess so. It’s gonna take a lot for, to think about this. Put these connections back together.

Yeah. Oh, I know. But then it becomes, like I said, it, I just feel like this is so reminiscent of bad dreams. She’s walking around, he takes her in, he starts therapy or whatever with her in his office to try to help with her memory. She tells him this, he, he suggests hypnotherapy could draw out some memories that she’s suppressed.

Asked her to start walking around and as she walks around the grounds in the foreground, we see this demonic looking hand. 

Craig: Yes, it’s like got sharp fingernails, but we’ve, we’ve already seen evil Dead bad doctor is like Michael Myers in around like. She sees, yeah. From 

Todd: here on out. Yeah. She sees him everywhere.

Yeah. 

Craig: But yes, he does. He has, I don’t know, demon hands, I guess. Sharp fingernails. 

Todd: Who knows why. 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know why, and I don’t remember when it happens, but at some point, evil, dead, bad doctor. Like wants his lobotomy tool. And so he goes in and he gets it, and then I feel like he puts on scrubs and stuff.

So he looks like a doctor, but then he puts latex gloves on his hands and the claws do not poke through. The latex? 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: You just see them up there and then he puts a ring on over the latex glove, and I did not know what was happening, but it was hilarious. 

Todd: Why did he do all that? I thought the ring would be significant.

Craig: It comes back at the end, but I don’t think we ever know anything about it. 

Todd: Oh. 

Craig: Like, spoiler alert, she wins. She, you know, the guy dies or whatever, and, and then she takes the ring and puts it on herself. 

Todd: Oh, right. 

Craig: We have no idea. I, I have no idea what this, I, 

Todd: I 

Craig: guess we’re never told. It’s a magic ring. What this ring is, I guess.

Oh God. I don’t know. That 

Todd: must be the thing that keeps him alive. He can’t die. 

Craig: God, who knows. 

Todd: Well, we can just go with it 

Craig: from this point on. I don’t know, like it’s just a bunch of business that drags on for too long. Yeah, we meet a couple of other characters. There’s Chris, who’s this hot, normal guy that doesn’t really belong in the mental institution, but he likes to blow things up.

I guess the last time he blew something up, something bad happened and his lawyer told him to like plead insanity to get a lesser, like, he’s like, so I just have six months in here and then I get out. Yeah, and like he’s just supposed to be a normal. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So weird. 

Todd: Yeah. He’s the normal guy in there. Then there’s this nurse Kiker, who’s a total bitch.

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: She’s the head nurse. She’s the nurse ratchet of the whole thing. 

Craig: There’s mean nurse and there’s nice nurse. 

Todd: Yeah. And nice nurse, which is distractingly gorgeous. 

Craig: She’s very 

Todd: pretty. Nurse Robbins. Yeah. She looked like she could have been Denise Richard’s sister. 

Craig: She’s really pretty. The, the main girl, I don’t know if I said this before, but she’s not a great actress, but she is really pretty.

It’s, it’s also funny that, you know, she’s. Checked in here, but for a good 30 minutes or so, she’s running around in high cut, eighties panties and a crop top that is so bulky that if you were only four foot tall and you looked up, you would be looking directly at her breast. Yeah. ’cause she has huge boobs and this big, bulky thing and.

It looks like she’s like in flash dance or something, but even more skimpy and she just runs around in it. As I said before, this is not a women’s ward. This is like Yeah. A, a mixed ward full of people. Full of, well, with one orderly and one nurse on duty all the time, but she just runs around, looks like just casually is talking to people like, what, why, what is the put on some sweatpants.

Todd: No, just wear your panties. This is the eighties and it’s a horror movie. 

Craig: I get it, but it’s stupid. 

Todd: It was fantastic. 

Craig: She looks like she’s going to a model shoot. 

Todd: Well, it’s true. I, I read something in the trivia that stated that that was not the original intent, but I cannot believe that one bit. 

Craig: I don’t believe that story.

I read that story too. It, it, it said something like, she felt like the hospital gown made her look too bulky, so she cut it short. Bullshit. That shirt was made like that, that was not a hospital gown. 

Todd: Yeah, it’s a hundred percent accurate. 

Craig: Yeah. If you’re a straight dude, she looks amazing. Like she looks, she looks good.

I, I get the appeal, but it’s just dumb. Like you’re in 

Todd: the 

Craig: hospital. Well, 

Todd: I love this because, I mean, well, we got Chris who’s gonna be like her little boyfriend for a little while. We got Bert the worrier. We get more visions, we get this crazy nun gal who you know is outside. She’s always on her knees praying and ranting on crazy religious gal.

Jane being tormented and you know, there’s just, like you said, there’s a bunch of business. Then there’s another dream sequence, which I absolutely loved, which was. Kiker cackling torture method. 

Craig: Yeah, I liked that too. But what is happening? Like why is she having these? I really, I did, I really enjoyed this scene.

It was maybe one of my favorite scenes, but it doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Of 

Todd: course not. 

Craig: Or it doesn’t seem to, 

Todd: no, it’s just her wakes up or appears to wake up, wander around the hallways, gets caught by Dr. Kiker gets strapped up in the showers, I guess, to some overhead hanging restraints.

And, uh, Dr. Kiker started tossing her down straight under her white T-shirt, which has the intended effect, and then the blast of the hose just tears her shirt right off 

Craig: Uhhuh, 

Todd: and then it moves up to her face. And you know, until, until her skin peels off from where it’s hitting her in the cheek and then she wakes up, we get the obligatory nice long breast shots that we need for a movie like this from the eighties.

And I was, I was entertained. 

Craig: Yeah. And she’s beautiful. She has a beautiful body. She looks fantastic. 

Todd: Yeah, it’s just so on the nose. I was like, 

Craig: yes, A white, white 

Todd: halter top. Okay, here’s where we’re going with that. 

Craig: Getting sprayed in the face. Come on. Yeah. I don’t know. And then there’s like little bits of exposition or drops, like somebody just happens to casually mention that everybody who’s in isolation, which is in a different building, I think it’s the building with the death.

Pit or whatever it’s called. And the evil doctor is looking for her and he kills the nice nurse and he carries her body to the isolation building and he’s 

Todd: got these red eyes that you’re glowing. Yeah. Again, pro, that’s probably why you were thinking of uh, Gies a bit too. I bet. Yeah. 

Craig: Well, yeah, and he still got.

The hole in his head. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: From where he got shot. And he looks pretty ghoulish and like after nice nurse gets killed, Chris, the normal guy who shouldn’t be in a mental institution is worried about her. And Jane just very casually says to him, yeah, she won’t be back. And he’s like, what? And she’s like, what?

Oh God. 

Clip: Oh my God. Yeah. 

Craig: And then they don’t talk about it anymore until later. That’s right. And then she has more hypnotherapy and the doctor brings out a memory of her when she’s a little girl and he asks her name and she says her, her name is Sarah. And he asked about her mom and her dad, and she says like, I’m not supposed to talk about daddy.

And then in the, the memory that she’s in. Her mom like comes and grabs her and is like, come on, we gotta go. We gotta go, we gotta go. We gotta run. We gotta go somewhere safe or something. And then she freaks out and the doctor shakes her out of it. And then this scene was so funny to me because. He surmises something that’s entirely not true.

He’s like, uh, yeah, I think you had some trauma. And she’s like, well, tell me. He’s like, no, I don’t usually tell people till later. She’s like, tell me now. And he is like, okay, well I think maybe your mom like took you from your dad and, and you’ve got some, 

Todd: like, where does he coming up with this? Right. 

Craig: I, I, yeah.

Like he makes it sound like the mother was. Kidnapping her. It’s so weird. 

Todd: It is weird, but as soon as this was over, I was like, oh, okay, now I get it. Now we know who daddy is. You know, like, 

Craig: I mean, I, it crossed my mind, but ugh, I just didn’t even care. I’m like, oh God, who cares? 

Todd: You didn’t wanna solve, you were not anxious to solve the mystery of this woman’s strange connection to this place.

Craig: She also, I think she says to him, there’s such great lines in this movie. She’s like, I have a terrible sense of danger here.

Todd: Oh my God. 

Craig: Then Bud, who was literally introduced by Chris as being twitchy, but harmless attacks an orderly for no reason. It’s like you’re all going down. 

Todd: Yeah, this place is going down. 

Craig: I don’t know. I think what they are trying to suggest is that whatever is happening here is happening. An adverse effect on the patients, 

Todd: like 

Craig: they can sense it, it’s riling them up.

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: like, like he’s like, he’s not, he’s not a dangerous person. It’s only because of the presence of evil. Dr. Michael Myers, who’s still lurking around. He goes into that guy Bud’s padded cell and we don’t see what happens except for then, like an orderly sees bud like escaping and there’s a lot of these scenes.

Not a lot. I would say three or four of these scenes from this point forward where it’s hearing laughter or hearing something and then you like Bud or dead, nice nurse will just like walk across frame really fast or like cross a hallway or come out of a door and go into another door. Like they’re going really fast and it appears that you know they are zombies or their.

Possessed or whatever and you know, bud leads the orderly into the clock tower to his death. And 

Todd: yeah. 

Craig: And that happens several times, uh, at some point. Nice nurse does that to mean nurse lures her in with creepy laughter and then kills her. 

Todd: Yeah. I think that, you know, this is what makes the movie rather long, is these sequences are really, really drawn out.

I think it loses some of the tension. They’re shot pretty well and there are moments where, you know, the camera will pan across and Jimmy was the name of the orderly is like wandering around looking for this guy. He’s, he’s chasing, and then as the camera pans by, you can see that he’s actually in the foreground around the corner.

But then as Jimmy gets there, then he’s gone again. I don’t know, I guess it’s just a little tough to sustain. You know, these shots sound right, but when they’re. Kind of put in sequence and just somebody who really doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing to make really good jump scares or whatever it, it just seems very pedestrian, you know?

It just feels like, okay, I’m gonna wait for Jimmy to find what he needs to find, or for this guy to spring up behind him and kill him, which he does. But Jimmy finds bur, 

Craig: yeah, 

Todd: I thought his name was Bert. It must be Bud. Something like that. 

Craig: I don’t know. Whatever. 

Todd: Strapped to a chair. With a drill, like it’s almost like a dentist drill or something just stuck in his eye, just going, going, going, going, going.

And that’s what freaks him out. And then he runs downstairs. He sees the hot nurse’s body there as well. Bad doctor comes up behind him and strangles him. And so now Jimmy’s out for the count, and now we’re getting a lot of the bodies piling up in this building that nobody can go into because it’s boarded up.

But yet everybody can go into. But because you just need to walk around the boards to get in. 

Craig: Also only like three or four people work in this entire ward. Yeah. So like they’re just kind of getting picked off. 

Todd: Let’s take it out 

Craig: everybody, but then also another, then we get a little bit into Freddie Krueger territory where bad doctor is taunting Jane and he quips like, yeah.

That was weird. She looks down and he’s, you know, standing down below her window as Mike Meyers will, but he’s like, I am the head surgeon here. And then he throws a head at her. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And there’s another one later where he eventually cuts out good doctor’s brain, and then he sees Jane again. He is like, doctor so and so wanted to give you a piece of his mind and throws the brain at her.

Like, really? 

Todd: Why not? I thought it was fun. But it does establish that we’re not necessarily, I think it’s trying to, anyway, establish that we can’t really trust what’s real and what’s not, because that turns out to be a dream for her. She wakes up. 

Craig: Which one? The head. 

Todd: The head one? Yeah. 

Craig: No, I didn’t realize 

Todd: that was As soon as she wakes, as soon as she screams and turns away that she suddenly wakes up and there’s a nurse there, she’s like, yeah, we gave you that sedative as you were freaking out.

You must have had a bad dream. And we’re only 45 minutes into the movie by this point, and 

Craig: I know we’re almost to the part where I thought it was surely almost over. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: She tells good doctor, that bad doctor is there. She’s like the surgeon who took my memories is here, and then there’s more hypnotherapy and I don’t know God.

Todd: Well, the doctor puts, it’s so funny that this whole deal about what she in the hallway was like, the people in the basement, they need to be let out. They need to be let out. And Dr. You know, that doesn’t stir anything up in Dr. Swan’s memory, but during her hypnotherapy, she goes back to her flashback and she has some vision.

And how she’s laying on a table. She can’t see the wall. She had to walk to the park from the hospital, and the, the surgeon doesn’t want her to be afraid. She goes, he smells like death, like formaldehyde. And suddenly Dr. Swan is like, whoa, formaldehyde. What? Describe this guy. 

Craig: I saw formaldehyde in the opening scene.

Todd: Yeah, a pitfall of dead bodies in the cellar is not gonna spur his memory, but for mal dyed it left a stronger impression on him. Anyway, meeting’s now coming to head like Jane is possessed now, like she’s. Briefly possessed by the bad doctor and says some things to the Dr. Swan. 

Craig: Yeah, I mean, she is like, she’s possessed by him.

She talks to him, I don’t remember what she says. Something ominous and then she comes back to herself and he’s like, get out. Get out. And he kicks her out and doesn’t tell her why. And he starts drinking whiskey out of the bottom drawer of his desk and calls the nurse and is like, give that girl double, double her cell sedatives and put her on Thorazine.

Like he just wants to like put her into a coma, 

Todd: right? Yep. 

Craig: But she goes to Chris. Yeah, she goes to Chris and she’s like, I need your help. And he is like, okay, tongue your meds. And she does. And they sneak out together and just as they’re about to escape, she gets out. But the orderly nabs. Chris, so she has to get away by herself and she goes to the clock tower and nice nurse like lures her.

She doesn’t realize that nice nurse is dead, dead. Nice nurse like lures her to the top and bad doctor is like lurking around and bad doctor confronts her and she runs and there’s a slow chase, like he’s chasing her through. The death pit. Oh. And chasing her upstairs and stuff so long, and I, oh, thank God.

This is it. Thank God. This is it. Like the, like the main villain is chasing the main girl, and that’s when I pause it and there’s still 40 minutes left. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: Huh. It’s like a whole, there is, there’s still a whole nother movie left. 

Todd: Oh. It’s so, it’s so sad because he catches up with her and she just like faints.

I guess no, because she’s, you’re right, there’s still a half an hour to go. ’cause I checked the time at exactly the same moment as you did. She’s tied up to a table, the dungeon, and this is when things get real. The living dead are unleashed. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: Suddenly the zombies are coming out of the pit and the doctor is standing there over them.

Cackling, evilly. And I was like, why? Why now? Why now are the evil dead? Coming to life, 

Craig: right? They all come up that spiral staircase and somehow Chris escapes and finds her and cuts her loose or whatever. And then the zombies, we see a couple of zombies. Uh, well, actually it’s like a whole hoard of zombies approach.

These cops who are totally oblivious, they’re just having a conversation in the foreground where this whole. Massive zombies are like creeping up behind them 

Todd: about donuts 

Craig: and, and they attack the cops and rip their heads open and eat their brains, because I guess that’s what zombies do. If you are an evil doctor who is, you know, I don’t know, lobotomizing people drawing weird, carving weird symbols into their chest, doing some kind of weird ceremony in the basement of some weird building.

You make zombies and they crave brains. I guess it’s, it doesn’t make any. Sense. 

Todd: Oh, it’s just a mishmash, right? Of just a whole bunch of ideas that are just thrown in here, but now it becomes a zombie movie. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: It moves from like sort of pseudo Freddy Krueger to full on thriller style zombie movie, and I was like, sure, why not?

You know? I actually thought this was the more interesting part of the whole movie, to be fair. There’s no mystery. You know, the kind of mystery or whatever in the beginning is, was pretty lame, but this, we actually got some kills and some pretty decent practical effects. I was kind of impressed actually.

Craig: Some of the practical effects are fun. Some of them look not good. There’s a part, I, I don’t know, I don’t remember who it is that maybe bad doctor, somebody dies in their head, like kind of shrinks, and then like, that’s later. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It, it just, it looks like a. I mean, I’m sure it is deflated. Exactly.

It’s a balloon deflating or some kind of bladder deflating, but I didn’t care for it. Some of it looks okay. I actually liked the brain eating. The brains didn’t look real, but they looked fun. It looked like a jello mold. 

Todd: Oh. The zombies would like 

Craig: brain or something, 

Todd: hold the brain out like whole and then hold it up like a trophy and go wandering off.

Like are they collecting these, are they gonna have like a big brain party later or something like that? 

Craig: I 

Todd: don’t They weren’t chowing into ’em right away. No. Or me. I think they just had one brain that they. They had to keep reusing 

Craig: probably evil dead, nice nurse kills mean nurse, which was fine. ’cause she was a real bitch.

Anyway. Yeah. And, and it’s just the way that she was written, everything she had to say was nasty. Like every, every line that she had was just nasty. Like, what’s wrong with you? And then. Uh, Chris and Jane like run to cars like they’re going to get away. Yes, but the hoods of all the cars are up and he’s like, 

Clip: damn, the distributor’s gone, but dead people, they sure are smart.

Craig: So we are to believe that these zombies have disabled all of the cars by pulling out the alternators. 

Todd: I loved that line. I thought. Once I heard that line, I thought, yeah, this movie clearly doesn’t take itself seriously. Well, they’re not particularly fast zombies, but just like in all these zombie movies, no.

Regardless they can get these people somehow and a stupid Jane as she’s running away from people keeps running into buildings. Instead of running down the street and getting help. 

Craig: Yes. And they’re in the hospital and on the ward. And at this point, well, and you get the thriller scene with the like behind the zombies and whatnot and then they’re in the hospital again.

And in my notes I have, where did all the other patients go? 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: This ward was full of people, 

Todd: full of potential victims too. I don’t know. 

Craig: Now it is abandoned. 

Todd: Yeah. Abandoned and dark. But the crazy nun gal pops it outta nowhere and tosses some holy water. Onto a zombie and had a cool melting effect. I really liked that bit.

Yeah, it was fun. It was fine. Yeah. So they’re like, oh my God, what’s this? And, and then the nun, because this is what happens in these movies too. And it happened in Bad dreams too. It was like the black girl in Bad Dreams. She just knows exactly what to do to fix this whole thing. 

Clip: Holy water, holy water kills the beast.

Where can we get more of this holy water system? Any water’s holy if it’s blessed, can holy water. Stop what’s happening here. Stop him. The place where the beast rises must be washed clean. The desecrated grounds must be made holy. 

Todd: And so I gotta give him credit for this. They figure out that Holy water is the answer.

And Chris Turn store was like, Hey, uh, how do you make holy water anyway? You know, can you just bless it? She’s like, well, I do the blessing, but God’s the one who consecrates it and he looks and he goes. Could you uh, just bliss that whole water tower over there? 

Craig: Yeah, that was pretty funny. 

Todd: I loved it. I’ve never seen that before and I don’t know why not.

’cause it is brilliant. I mean, just make the whole water supply holy water. 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. It was pretty funny. 

Todd: This is going down in my survival book for the zombie apocalypse. So he’s got his idea because he is the guy who’s into blowing things up. He thinks if he can go to the water tower and blow it up and tip it over, it’s just gonna make water go everywhere, especially into that building, which is conveniently placed right at the foot of the water tower.

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: So he wants to make a bomb. Meanwhile, Dr. Swan is like going kind of crazy himself and he just decides he is gonna go take care of Evil Doctor once and for all. And so he runs down to take care of evil doctor and ends up strapped to the table and he gets it. He’s being tortured. 

Craig: Yeah, that was, I, I kinda liked that scene too.

Not even because it looked particularly great, but just ’cause it was kind of fun and sadistic. Like 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: evil doctor gets good doctor on the table, and then the next time we see him, his head is shaved. So they took, I’m glad that they took the time to shave his head. No, 

Todd: I didn’t think of that. 

Craig: And his skull has opened up and his brain is exposed and then the evil doctor starts like poking it with needles and like good doctor is like laughing like it tickles.

Todd: Oh. Then he’ll like, be sad. Then he’ll be laughing again. I thought that was a particular, 

Craig: I thought that was. Kinda hilarious. 

Todd: It was funny, and it was also kind of sick. You know, I, I dug it like 

Craig: it was sick. 

Todd: By the time he was done, he had all these needles poking out of there. And by the way, the actor who plays good doctor Jeremy Slate, is just a screen and television veteran.

He was all over TV in the golden age of television, I recognized him a hundred percent, and I, he did a very, very long stint on General Hospital as well. I think he was in like, was it General Hospital or maybe it was one Life to Live. 

Craig: I don’t know, but I can see that. I mean, he, he seemed like he knew how to work in front of a camera.

Todd: He was good in this, honestly. 

Craig: Yeah. He didn’t have a lot to do, but he did well with what he had. 

Todd: That was probably my favorite bit. 

Craig: Yeah, I liked that part. I don’t know. I really liked the wet T-shirt dream, but we’ve got It’s 

Todd: expect that coming outta me more than coming outta you, Craig. I’m impressed. 

Craig: It wasn’t for the boobs.

I just thought it was a fun. Shot. But anyway, Jane and Chris are talking, you know, about what they’re gonna do or whatever, or they’re having a little heart to heart or something. And I, I think I heard it right. I’m pretty sure he said, come on. We’ve got a water balloon to drop on these assholes. Did he say that?

Todd: Yeah, he did.

Craig: Oh God, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t take the time to rewind it. ’cause I was watching the second half of this right before we got on. I didn’t know if I would’ve time, but I was pretty sure he said that. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. Okay. So the nun chance and looks at the water tower. So I guess she’s making it holy. I mean, I don’t even know if this lady is really a nun or if she’s just a patient who thinks she’s a nun.

I, I don’t even know. 

Todd: She’s whatever she has to be to make it work. Apparently. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Cheryl’s being chased by the evil doctor. Done, eventually running back into the building like an idiot. And then there’s that moment where she ends up downstairs and finds Dr. Swan. And the evil doctor is there and she looks up at him and goes, daddy, 

Craig: yeah.

We get more of that flashback. She’s running away and she look like she falls and she reaches up her hand and it’s him. Meanwhile, Chris is at the top of the water tower setting a bomb. 

Todd: Yep. As the zombies are climbing up after him. 

Craig: Uh, bad and he fights one off. He lights the fuse on the bomb, then a zombie attacks him and he fights the zombie and he throws the zombie off the water tower and he has a little celebration, and then the bomb goes off and blows the whole thing up.

And I presume it blew him up too. 

Todd: You must’ve 

Craig: right? 

Todd: We don’t see him after this because he was 

Craig: no. But it was just pretty funny. Like he has this moment and like he’s got his hands up in the air. He is jumping up and like I did it. I did boom, and the water tower falls and it floods the dead pit. It looked to me like they did this with miniatures.

I couldn’t tell. 

Todd: Yeah, it looks very obvious. Miniature work 

Craig: with all the water. Flowing out of the windows and stuff. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And this, I also did not understand this part because the water floods at this point, the zombies are not in the dead pit. 

Todd: Correct. 

Craig: But, but the water falls into it and evil doctor just starts to disintegrate.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Well, and the dis, the disintegration looks pretty good. It’s only when they used the air bladder to like shrink his head that I thought it didn’t look very good. Mm. I, I guess we’re just to presume that the same thing happened to all the other hundreds of zombies that were just out and around. 

Todd: I think so, because the nerd, the nun almost kinda says like, once we like flood the consecrated ground or the dead pit or whatever, with the, with the holy water, it’s gonna solve everything.

So I think it, we are just to assume that they. They all dropped dead just like the doctor did. 

Craig: Okay. 

Todd: And it was a cool effect. You’re right. I, I actually enjoyed that. They lingered on that quite a bit. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: That’s why I thought, you know, this movie had more production value than I expected and. I think a lot of money went into some of these special effects that they lingered on a lot.

Aside from that, it’s just people in places, you know? So that’s not like, 

Craig: yeah, 

Todd: it’s gonna be much more impressiveness. 

Craig: Well, and, and then it, and then it ends, you know, it, it comes in a close shot on Jane and she finds, I guess, in the pool of Mushy Goo, that was her dad. She finds his ring and she puts it on and she’s like kneeling, sitting on her feet and her, she’s kind her.

Her face is kind of tilted down and her eyes are closed, and I’m like, she’s obviously gonna open her eyes and they’re gonna be glowing. And that’s exactly what happens. Yep. And that’s the end. I did not care for this movie. There are, there are things that I can appreciate it. There are, there are brief scenes that I enjoyed.

I enjoyed some of the special effects, but I didn’t care for it because unlike. The bite, which I felt like you didn’t like, I felt like this story was nonsensical. It just, it, it felt lazy. Like, it just felt like let’s throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Whereas in the bite, at least I had an emotional investment in the characters.

Like I, I didn’t think that they were smart, but I liked them and I cared about them. And in this, I was like, oh my God, just who cares? 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: whatever’s gonna happen just happen already. 

Todd: Fair enough. I mean, this movie was very pedestrian as far as these things go. It, it’s just a mishmash of other films. Some better, some just as bad and you know, it kind of goes through the motions and it doesn’t really go any, I I would, I mean, it does go a couple places.

I wasn’t expecting. But it wasn’t like groundbreaking, amazing. You know, it’s just like, oh, now it’s a zombie movie. Okay. I like the fact that they got the, you know, the special effects were kind of fun. I don’t know, to me it was just kind of, eh, I didn’t dislike it. I didn’t particularly like it. I just thought, oh, this is another one of those movies.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: Bad Dreams was a better version of this kind of movie because it 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Had compelling characters and it had a twist at the end. It had an actual mystery and it was just kind of altogether better. 

Craig: I think that this would be something that would be perfectly fine to put on in the background, like 

Todd: right.

Craig: If you’re doing something else, I mean, there are, there are some good visuals and it’s ho, it’s hokey and silly and I mean, it can be kind of amusing in that way, but to sit down and watch it for the full, whatever the runtime is. Yeah. Feels even longer than it actually is, was tedious. It felt like work.

Like I don’t like for the podcast to feel like work. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, this, this felt like a chore that I had to do, not something that I wanted to do. And if I had put it on for myself, I would’ve turned it off probably 15, 20 minutes in. 

Todd: I, I have a confession that after the first 45 minutes, I put it at one and a half speed.

It was much more watchable at that point, in that way. 

Craig: Yeah. I, I can, I, I, I imagine. 

Todd: Do you ever do that? I do that more often than I, 

Craig: no, I don’t, I’ve never done it with a movie, I guess. I’ve never tried. I do it with audio books all the time, 1.5 or two. Mm-hmm. I, I currently am listening to our. Next Book Club book, head Full of Ghosts by Paul Trimble at 1.5 Speed.

And we haven’t talked to our book club. Everybody’s been busy for the holidays, so it’s been a while since we’ve talked to them, but I’m looking forward to talking to them next week. And listeners. If you would ever be interested in being a part of that or the rest of our Patreon community where you can find like Mini SOS and some behind the scenes insight.

Todd and I recently got together and posted some pictures of of that on the Patreon. You too can be privy to that for just $5 a month. 

Todd: That’s right. It’s a good time. 

Craig: What’s the website, Todd? 

Todd: The website is chainsaw horror.com. Patreon website is patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Well, thank you Craig for doing my work for me.

This at the very end here, really 

Craig: appreciate, I saw the opportunity and I took it. 

Todd: That’s perfect. Well, I have very little left to add to that. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.