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.

Getting set to take part in an ICM poll for the best flicks of 1981,I started looking online for titles from the year to stream. Mostly finding mainstream movies,I was very happy to spot a title that looked incredibly strange,which led to me jumping in the pit.The plot:Only having his teddy bear Teddy as a friend, young Jamie Benjamin starts believing that Teddy can talk to him. Bullied by the locals,Benjamin keeps in mind his grand secret,that he has found a group of Trogs based in a pit in the woods. Waving goodbye,Benjamin's parents hire Sandy O'Reilly to babysit. Finding O'Reilly hot,Benjamin asked Teddy for advice on how to get her to become his girlfriend,as Benjamin causes the Trogs to get a taste for humans. View on the film:Originally written as much darker,the screenplay by Ian A. Stuart (who never wrote another film) goes for a Psychotronic paradise. Sending all the folk who Jamie hates into the pit,Stuart gives the dialogue an unsettling Sci-Fi tone,where the bitter and twisted way that the "kind" old folk and the little brats talk sound like they are in an alt world that has gone awry. While not delivering any outright shivers, Stuart covers the film in utterly bizarre antics,from sweet little Jamie getting advice from his psychotic teddy bear Teddy on how to get Sandy to fancy him,to inexplicably deciding that instead of continuing to feed the Trogs animal meat,he should serve them up a daily special of human flesh.Following Stuart in this being his lone movie,director Lew Lehman (who had to get someone else to film scenes with topless women,after getting banned by his wife!) and cinematographer Manfred Guthe bounce the Trogs on an oddball atmosphere,with the critters looking like zombie Ewoks and their feeding time mostly kept to loud eating sounds from the pit. Correctly keeping it ambiguous over if he is aware of the weirdness,Lehman bins into the pit "unique features",bringing up a curve-ball twist that creates a ghost,and a freeze frame ending,that brings Jamie close to this pit of madness.

Out as a double bill on Anchor Bay's drive-in OOP DVD together with Hellgate (1990). It's one that won't stick on your mind. The opening sequence is suddenly edited with the opening credits and in fact it were shots that you would see further into the flick.A youngster Jamie Benjamin (played by Sammy Snyders) has a weird obsession with his babysitter and sex. He is just 12 years old and lives a bit on his own while peeping tom on his babysitter in bed and in the shower. he even get it so far to let older women get undressed for him. he does it all with the help of his teddy bear. But being a bit of a weird fella he's naturally being harassed by people. walking in the forest he sees a pit with monsters, Revenge is on his way.Before we have the revenge you get a rather boring flick were no gore is attached until the final of the flick were the monsters are revealed and people are out to kill them. Sammy Snyders never made it into the scene and stopped in 1982. His babysitter Jeannie Elias went further and is still going on as a actress and as a voice in so many cartoons and animation flicks.When people are falling into the pit you never see them being attacked by the monsters. There's maybe only a few seconds of red stuff in it, weird being made in an era full of explicit gore. Due the peeping by a youngster it is a bit campy. Jeannie Elias (the babysitter), Laura Hollingsworth (Marg)(her only flick), and Jennifer Lehman (Caren)(now a business manager in the scene) do show there juggs briefly.Maybe one to see with your kids, they maybe will be frightened. And the end, well, so predicable...Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

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