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Undescribable Perfection

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Eric Deighton's review of the Pit** warning spoilers**This was the most interesting of the four films reviewed by this group in 2017. Early on in this film I really thought that the troglodytes in the pit were purely in Jamie's imagination. That would have been an interesting twist. Unfortunately, the monsters in the pit are real and a rather unimaginative monster movie is presented to us instead of a more subtle psychological thriller/horror movie.Upon second viewing of the film, it occurred to me that perhaps there is an even more interesting twist in this movie. While on its face, this movie portrays Jamie as a "little pervert", upon closer examination a lot of the adult females in this movie really act inappropriately around this 12 year old boy. Lets begin with Jamie's teacher, Ms. Lynde. She busts Jamie for bringing a nude photography book into school and then looks through the book in front of Jamie and when he finishes writing on the blackboard she tells him to "rub it off and then go home". That must have been music to his perverted ears.The next inappropriately behaving woman in Jamie's life is the librarian, Marg Livingston. She acts throughout the movie like she has some terrible secret she is keeping. In the beginning of the movie she has already received a love letter from Jamie that contains her a photo of her own head crudely pasted onto the naked body of a woman that Jamie cut out of the nude photography book. But Marg keeps that letter until the nude photography book is returned. At that point she knows for sure that Jamie is the person who sent her the letter, but she tells no one, not even Jamie's parents, who are apparently her neighbors from across the street. While Marg Livingston warns her niece to stay away from Jamie, she describes him only as "distressing". Worse still, Marg Livingston agrees to strip naked in front of her front window when she receives an obviously taped phone call from Jamie. In the taped phone call Jamie mispronounces her niece, Abigail's, name in his trademark fashion as "Abergail". Marg Livingstone obviously knew it was Jamie watching her from outside her front window and stripped nude nonetheless. Hell, how could she have not seen him? He was right outside her window taking Polaroids. What's worse Marg Livingstone never reports Jamie to the police or his parents for his late night photo session.The next inappropriately behaving woman in Jamie's life is his 24 year old live in babysitter, Sandy O'Reilly, who walks around the house in the tiniest, sexist little nightshirt after she has already been warned of Jamie's sexual curiosity. She also sleeps with her bedroom door wide open and her breast hanging out of her shirt. Worse still, she agrees to bathe a naked 12 year old horny boy?!?!?! Who does that? Why does she tell Jamie that "its bedtime and bath time as well" in the first place? Come to think of it, in the first scene in which she meets Jamie, she sees him go under the table to stare up her skirt and she uncrosses and opens her knees to give him a better view and then smiles at him after he gets busted by his father. Even after she knows his sexual interest in her, she walks around Jamie wearing nothing but a shower towel.Creepiest of all is Jamie's mother, Mrs. Benjamin, who tells Sandy O'Reilly that her husband thinks that she spends to much attention on Jamie. Jamie tells Sandy O'Reilly that his mother hand bathes him several times a day and wonders if he really is as constantly dirty as his mother insists as justification for the excessive bathing. Jamie's mother is clearly aware that Jamie has stalked previous female baby- sitters and yet hires 24 year old Sandy to watch him. Yet at the end of the movie, Jamie goes to live with his grandparents. Did his mother abandon him?Interesting facts about the making of this movie:*This was a Canadian made movie but it was shot in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. *Jamie was played by child actor Sammy Snyder who never acted again after this film but went on to be a professional dancer. Sammy Snyder left the set after shooting was finished for the day and hung out at a local disco. * Sandy O'Reilly was played by actress Jeannie Elias, who never did another feature film but did many iconic cartoon character voices throughout the 1990s. * Screenwriter Ian Stuart believes that his story was basically ruined in the final version of the film because he had Teddy Bear's voice and the monsters in the pit as purely Jamie's over active imagination. Over time, the imaginary creatures became so real to Jamie that he insisted they were real and when his babysitter/caretaker became frustrated at this nagging insistence and slapped him, everything in the film from that instant until the final scene in the doctor's office occurs only in his mind. The end of the film was supposed to be a big reveal that there was never actually anything in the Pit. At the end we know that nobody who died is actually dead and are all busily going about their lives as they always did. Both the ending and the entire vibe of the film turned out to be completely different from what he wrote. *Director, Lew Lehman never did another film and his wife forbid him to be present to film any of the nude scenes in this movie. Inexplicably, his own daughter, Jennifer Lehman, was cast as the skinny dipper that is carried off by the troglodytes. Director, Lew Lehman, was permitted by his wife to personally film his own daughter's unnecessary gratuitous topless scene.

"The Pit" follows a young adolescent boy, Jamie, who is an outcast in his bucolic small town; his only friend is a teddy bear, he has an unusually focused sexual interest for his age, and his classmates pick on him incessantly. When his parents leave town for an extended business trip, he is left under the care of Sandy, a psychology graduate student who is babysitting to make money. Jamie bonds with her (and also becomes romantically obsessed), and lets her in on his hidden secret: an ominous pit in the woods that is home to a group of carnivorous creatures.Walking the line somewhere between "Carrie" and "Gremlins," (the latter of which it predates), "The Pit" was an unexpected surprise to me. I went into it (no pun intended) with considerably low expectations, given that everything from the synopsis of the film to its poster art scream "really awful '80s movie," so I anticipated little, but found quite a lot to like here. Make no mistake—this film is pretty ridiculous—but it's also quite well-done and takes itself just seriously enough to not implode. If one can get past the silliness of flesh-eating troglodytes being fed local townspeople by a disturbed young boy, the film is insanely enjoyable.While the special effects of the creatures are somewhat dated, and the entire premise utterly insane, "The Pit" no less manages to be engrossing largely due to its lead performances from Sammy Snyders and Jeannie Elias. The scenes between Jamie and Sandy are some of the most interesting (and disturbing) in the film, and set a sinister tone that permeates throughout; the quieter scenes at home are where the pair's acting really shines, and the character dynamics are most vividly realized.The film also gets major points for managing to be suspenseful as the creatures are fed victim after victim—everyone Jamie has been scorned by. It's all headed somewhere grim, and the tension between Jamie and Sandy increases as his antics grow more and more twisted. It's also a very nicely-shot film with some beautiful compositions, and a fantastic, bucolic setting that is rich in atmosphere and lends it a late-'70s Americana feel. The conclusion to the film is unexpected and provides one final jab at the audience that steers from the expected formula.Overall, "The Pit" is a hidden gem of a horror film, and is a mild triumph in its own right. It's the kind of film that takes itself seriously yet requires the complete reverse of its audience. If one can suspend their disbelief, there is a finely-crafted, atmospheric monster movie here. Granted, it is far from scary, but it is ridiculously entertaining, consistently sinister, and never once fails to keep one's attention. It's held up rather well for a film that ascribes itself to such a fantastical premise. 8/10.

I can honestly say that THE PIT is unlike any film I've ever seen. There are several different themes running concurrently in this one-all wrapped up in a strange, low-budget, horror film.Jamie is quite obviously a severely emotionally disturbed loner of a pre-teen weirdo. He has no friends, save for 'Teddy'-his teddy-bear (that talks back to him...), and some troll-like creatures that live in a pit in the woods. He's also a bit of a pervert and has an unhealthy obsession with his latest live-in babysitter. When Jamie runs out of money and can't afford to provide his troll-buddies with meat from the local grocer-he turns to the locals that have wronged him as a new source of food for the pit- dwellers... THE PIT is one of those seriously 'what the f!ck' type films that really makes you wonder what types of psychedelic drugs the writers were on to come up with such a story. There's no shortage of bizarrity going on in this one. The talking teddy-bear, some alluded to incest themes ('do you know why my mother washes me so much? Is she really trying to make me clean? Do you like washing me???'), Jamie's overall creepy nature, pit trolls-the list goes on. The kid that plays Jamie is surprisingly good in his role as the freakish outcast-and his ability to switch from vulnerable and almost sympathy-inducing, to deranged and homicidal on-the-fly is pretty noteworthy. My only real problem with THE PIT is there are parts toward the middle and end that are (I hope intentionally) 'funny' and sorta kills the mood at times-and the parts toward the end where the trolls get out feels a little disjointed compared to the rest of the film (though the very last scene is priceless and suitably twisted). There's very little gore to speak of, and just a few quick titty shots-so don't expect anything in terms of graphic sex or violence. In the case of this film though-I was entertained enough that I didn't really notice it-and for once-I'll go so far as to say that the film didn't suffer from the lack of graphicness. Definitely an odd-ball of a film-and since I tend to dig the 'evil kids' sub-genre, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Not a 'great' film so-to- speak...but definitely original and entertaining. 8.5/10

This is one seriously messed up and lunatic low-budget early 80's horror production about … um … About a whole bunch of crazy stuff, as a matter a fact! The screenplay for "The Pit" is senseless and beyond incoherent, but at the same time it combines a lot of ingredients that unquestionably will appeal to horror fanatics (and in particular the fans of cheesy and offbeat cult flicks), like psychopathic geek-kids, perverted evil-eyed teddy bears, holes full of prehistoric carnivores, lurid babysitters sleeping with their nipples exposed and hot librarians being forced to take their clothes off. "The Pit" is probably one of the strangest and most delirious 'so-bad-it-is-good' movies of its era, but the weirdness is also oddly addictive and massively entertaining. Twelve year old Jamie Benjamin has issues. Jamie has no friends and his personal babysitter Sandy doesn't love him back, but that's alright since he has profound conversations with his teddy bear (!) and a private collection of troglodyte monsters hidden in a pit somewhere in the nearby forest. When he runs out of money and meat to feed his beloved pit pets, nefarious Teddy advises Jamie to lure "nasty" people to the woods, like Sandy's boyfriend, the angry blind lady in her wheelchair, a couple of school bullies and the insufferable red-headed kid who doesn't let him ride her bicycle. I have to admit I overestimated "The Pit" at first… I was quasi sure that all the teddy bear talking and Trog-creature feeding would lead to a denouement explaining that Jamie's vivid imagination eventually got the upper hand and turned him into a youthful maniac. As I'm sure many other people did, I expected that it would be Jamie himself who committed the murders because Teddy (not God) told him to and there are no such things as troglodytes. Oh hell no! The pit creatures are real and they even break loose near the end, resulting in more gratuitous bloodshed and hilariously incompetent plotting. What a totally bonkers film! Have you ever seen a film in which a 12-year-old kid blackmails an adult female into stripping off her clothes, photograph her naked chest and then subsequently shows the pictures to his perversely sneering teddy bear? Or have you ever witnessed a large number of people falling into a hole in the ground with wide open eyes even though it is plain obvious to see? This movie is out-and-out hilarious, I assure you. Coherence, atmosphere and tension-building didn't really seem to matter to director Lew Lehman, but he nevertheless delivered an unscrupulously amusing potpourri of cheesy horror and deviant themes. Wonderful end shot as well, by the way!