The Pit (1981)

DIRECTED BY
Lew Lehman

STARRING
Sammy Snyders - Jamie Benjamin
Jeannie Elias - Sandy O'Reilly
Laura Hollingsworth - Marg Livingstone
Laura Press - Mrs. Benjamin
Andrea Swartz - Abergail

Genre - Horror/Psychological/Cult/B-Movies

Running Time - 96 Minutes

Score - 3 Howls Outta 4


While it's sometimes hard to be a pimp, I think it's even harder to be an outsider within a small community. People of all shapes, sizes, and ages picking on you for being different. You have to make your own friends because no one wants to play with you. Your parents think you have mental problems, especially when you're forced to talk to your stuffed bear about all the problems that are stressing you out. Sometimes you have to take out your frustrations on these people who do you wrong but tricking them into the direction of a massive pit where troll-like creatures live, waiting and hungry for human flesh. Because after all, karma is a bitch and bad people deserve to suffer.

I TOLD THEM ALL THEY WOULD PAY FOR MAKING FUN OF ME!! I WILL BE THE LAST ONE STANDING!! ME!! MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME!!!!!

Um, please read my review for 1981's lost cult film, THE PIT, while I up the dosage of my medication.

My younger years were really hard on me mentally and emotionally. Especially elementary school and junior high.

Yeah...

PLOT
A 12-year-old kid named Jamie (Sammy Snyders) is struggling with his day to day life in a small town. His parents don't seem to understand him, probably due to the fact that he's mildly autistic. His school mates pick on him. His neighbors call him names. Jamie has no friends and spends his time playing with reptiles or talking to his stuffed bear, Teddy, about his problems. Hitting puberty, Jamie has also become quite enamored with the female anatomy and will do just about anything to get a peek of some nice boobs and poontang - to educate himself of course.

Jamie's parents decide to leave town for a while and hire a young housekeeper named Sandy (Jeannie Elias) to watch over him. Jamie becomes infatuated with Sandy, which begins to creep her out. As a matter of fact, Sandy is just the latest housekeeper that has been creeped out by Jamie, to the point where they've never returned for a second visit. Also, Teddy isn't your average bear as he tells Jamie what to do. And usually these things are not exactly good either. Jamie has also found a pit inhabited by trogs, who he has befriended and struggles to feed meat to due to lack of money. But when Teddy advises him that maybe Jamie can feed the "bad people" to the trogs for mistreating him, Jamie decides that killing two birds with one stone may not be a bad idea after all.

REVIEW
I had never heard of THE PIT until recently, intrigued by the poster and one of my cousin's mention of watching it during the 1980s. The premise sounded intriguing and I had never seen it before, so I decided to take a chance on this lost horror flick. And I'm very glad I did because THE PIT turned out to be a pretty complex little terrorizer for such a low budget B-movie. I was not expecting much and got a whole lot from the film in the process. THE PIT is definitely a winner.

The story by Ian A. Stuart is actually more deep than I would expect from a film like THE PIT. For 96 minutes, there's actually several things going on all at once that nicely connect to one another almost seamlessly. The main issue of the film is really about Jamie and his struggle to live a normal life, but for some reason isn't allowed to in his own way. With many clues in the story, it's obvious the evidence points to Jamie having some form of autism. He doesn't connect with people normally. He says and does the wrong things at the most inappropriate times without really comprehending why they're wrong. He lives in his own little world and feels like a total stranger in the much bigger world. He notices certain things most people probably wouldn't notice. The kid obviously has some sort of mental issue going on. Yeah people don't seem to comprehend that and call him "funny" or "clumsy-stupid" just to make sense of it. At times, you wonder what's going on with him is actually happening or in his head. But nope, they're all real and makes sure to do whatever necessary to keep it that way. It's a pretty smart psychological thing going on here that we don't get from most horror flicks, especially those of the 1980s kind.

Speaking of Jamie, we also get his struggle over his blossoming sexuality. He rents out nude art books and cuts out from their pages. He has some sort of lingerie book under his bed. He tries every sneaky attempt to catch a glimpse of Sandy, going under the table to see what's between her legs. He also watches her in the shower or stares at her sleeping to see her exposed breasts. He even manages to scheme one of his neighbors into stripping for him in a false kidnapping ransom plot. Now I think all teenage boys are probably extremely horny and desperate to spread their seed as much as they can. But this kid really takes it a bit too far yet he doesn't understand what the boundaries are in a way. Jamie is obviously not only autistic, but sociopathic as well. Plus there's some mention of Jamie's mom having a REALLY close relationship with the boy, washing him until he's "clean". There's a huge sexual connotation going on in this film.

Obviously, we can say that this film is Freudian in nature. Teddy, Jamie's stuffed bear, is Jamie's id - telling him to do these things without any sort of moral, conscious center. Teddy does what he wants and doesn't care for the consequences. The pit itself could definitely be a symbol for the vagina. Think about it: Jamie's obsession with the pit doesn't really begin until he starts falling for Sandy, wanting to do everything in his power to please those inside this pit. He begins to feed the Trogs [or as Jamie calls them, Tra-la-logs] and when the meat he feeds them is not enough, things start to get worse as he feeds them human flesh. It's as if the meat represents his manhood, as if a certain amount of meat isn't enough and it needs to be bigger and bigger in order to please these trogs. And when the woman he loves learns his secret and suffers because of her greed to spread that knowledge with others, Jamie begins to lose his mind and decides to let the trogs out of the pit, as if to move on to something else. Hey, I could be reading this entirely wrong and it could just be a pit with trogs in it. But I think it's definitely sexual in nature and proof that the scriptwriter was smart enough to give a horror film some depth.

There are some plot holes obviously in the film that just make the movie more sillier than it probably should be. The whole concept of Teddy's character is never truly explained. Like I said, it could be Jamie's id talking to him through the stuffed animal. But there's one scene where the bear actually turns its head by itself without the presence of Jamie. So is Teddy possessed by evil? What's really going on here?

I also don't understand how such a large pit was unnoticed in such a small town for so long. You can't honestly tell me that Jamie was the only one who knew there was a pit there that had trogs living in there. How did those trogs manage to live for so long if they weren't fed by anyone? Not only that, but when Jamie would trick some people to fall into that pit, it was like they couldn't even see it and just fall right in blindly. It's not like the pit was in Jamie's mind because others saw it too. I guess it's just a question of stupidity.

Also, we never know the extent of Jamie's and his mother's relationship. It's brought up and pretty much implied, yet it never goes further than that. Things like that bug me because I feel what's the point in mentioning something serious like that if you won't bother to follow it up.

The direction by Lew Lehman is interesting because he pretty much takes the seriousness out of much of the story, turning it into some sort of campy flick. While he does do an effective job to show Jamie's struggle within his community and the abuse he takes [justifying his actions later on in the process], the way he does it is pretty bizarre. Instead of looking like a misunderstood autistic child, Jamie comes off as some sort of deranged pervert who murders old ladies [in probably the funniest moment in the entire film] and drags live cows in order to feed them to the trogs. It doesn't help that the music is almost something you'd hear from The Waltons, really making serious scenes seem sillier in the process. But Lehman does play the film mostly in a straight-forward manner and never tongue-in-cheek, which does help benefit the film greatly. All the technical stuff is done really well and the film looks great for such a low-budget B-movie from 1981. While the clothes and silly dialogue seem dated, the direction keeps the story timeless. I don't know if Lehman has directed anything else, but THE PIT is definitely a highlight.

Like I mentioned, there are cases of female nudity in the film, mainly breasts. Plus we get some gore at the end when the Trogs begin to feast on some human flesh. It looks convincing enough and is pleasing to the gorehound's eye. Plus the Trog costumes looked pretty good. You don't really see a lot of them really but when you do, they didn't look like vertically-challenged actors dressed in furry costumes. No TROLL 2 bullshit here.

The acting wasn't all that great really, but I felt it actually added to the charm of THE PIT. Sammy Synders is definitely the best actor of the cast as Jamie. He comes across both creepy, yet sympathetic as well. Viewers will either relate to him or think he's the littlest bastard in the world. I honestly related to the kid, even if the things he did were a bit extreme. What ever happened to Synders? Jeannie Elias was good as Sandy, Jamie's object of affection. She played it kind and was convincing in her evolution of realizing that Jamie wasn't exactly the most normal child out there. She had nice chemistry with Synders that bordered on both sweet and extremely awkward. The other actors were either awful or okay, but they were supporting characters that pretty much ended up cannon fodder anyway. So it wasn't too horrible.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED WHILE FEELING CLUMSY-STUPID

- Jamie asked Freddy if he could join his club, but got punched in the face instead. I guess Fight Club isn't looking for new members. Who bloody nose?

- Someone cut out a nude body of a woman out of a photography book. Okay look - I needed something to look at while I was in the bathroom for a long period of time. Educational purposes again, of course.

- Jamie has imaginary friends. Don't we all? I don't write these reviews. Billy does. And Jimmy plays Guitar Hero and Brian does the schoolwork. People say I'm crazy but my friends tell me I'm not. They wouldn't lie to me. They know better...

- The psychiatrist tells lovesick Jamie that their relationship wouldn't evolve into anything more because she's twice his age while washing him in a bathtub. Is this really about Trogs in a pit or the autobiography of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore? I'm just sayin'...

- Jamie tried to literally pull a cow towards the Trog pit to feed them. Well that answers the question of "Where's the beef?"

- Jamie pushed a wheelchair bound old lady into the pit. I guess Trogs will eat anything, even if it's past the expiration date.

- Don't ever engage in playtime with a girl you just met. It'll just lead to pain in the end. And I'm not talking about being eaten by Trogs. I'm talking about marriage. Both are like the same thing, but marriage is more painful. Remember that, kids.

THE FINAL HOWL
It's been quite a while since I've had real fun with a film, but THE PIT definitely met the quota and deserves the attention of every horror fiend out there who is willing to take a chance on a pretty subliminally deep flick. What should have been a more emotional story is turned into a silly piece of fluff about Trogs and a really perverted and troubled kid with an evil teddy bear. Sometimes, that's all we need in our entertainment. THE PIT is one film worth jumping into.