Monday, June 18, 2018

The Pit [1981]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

A lot of the movies we watch at Bad Movie Night have a tone problem. Tone problems often create the most comedy and are usually accidental as a result of a bad acting or production. In the case of "The Pit" a good portion of the problem can be traced back to the music. The music is entirely original compositions by the same person who apparently didn't get the memo that this move is supposed to be dark and creepy. Instead the score is peppered with comical stings and rimshot-esque noises whenever another person is fed to the monsters living in the pit. Of course, even with better music, this movie would still feel kind of like a few different people's visions. The writer of the film even released a novelization that stuck closer to the original script which was described as having a more sinister tone. But how sinister can a movie about monsters in a hole in the ground, an evil teddy bear, and a sex-obsessed 12-year-old be really?

The plot follows Jaime, a boy with no friends but a collection of nudie magazines and a teddy bear who tells him to murder. The film starts with him getting a new babysitter who he gets a crush on and manages to convince to wash him in the bathtub because apparently she knows nothing about 12-year-olds. He knows of a pit in the woods full of what he calls "Tra-la-logs." The babysitter says he means "troglodytes" even having not seen them, and he decides to do away with everyone mean to him by feeding them to the pit. We are treated to a series of pit feedings before Jaime decides to prove to the babysitter that the pit is real and she falls in accidentally and gets eaten. At this point we were 2\3 of the way through the movie and wondering where it could even go from there. Jaime lets the monsters out of the pit since he has "run out of bad people to feed them", they go around killing, and the townspeople off them with no one the wiser about Jaime's misdeeds. In the epilogue, Jaime ends up moving in with his grandparents and on his first day of hanging with his step-cousin, she pushes him into a pit of monsters, ending on a freeze frame.

Feed me, Jaime. 

The saddest moment of watching this film was when Adam pointed out that the troglodytes were somehow less offensive to look at than the garbage pail kids and we had to spend a lot more time looking at those.

Spoon Rating: 5

Grandma's Review: Nightmare. Poor Jaime.

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