190) The Pit (1981)

"They don't eat chocolate bars."

Director
Lew Lehman

Cast
Sammy Snyders - Jamie Benjamin
Jeannie Elias - Sandy O'Reilly
Sonja Smits - Mrs. Lynde
Laura Hollingsworth - Marg Livingstone
Richard Alden - Mr. Benjamin
Laura Press - Mrs. Benjamin
Paul Grisham - Freddy
Wendy Schmidt - Christina
Allison Tye - Alicia
Edith Bedker - Louise

You hear about movies with a cult following all the time. They're the failed movies that somehow earned a great deal of admiration and enjoyment over time. 

I've never thought of myself as a follower to a film labeled as having a cult following. 

I'm publicly declaring that I'm officially a part of this movie's cult following. 

"The Pit," released in 1981, is a Canadian horror flick that was actually filmed in Wisconsin. And things get weirder from there. 

The story centers on 12-year Jaime Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) who, to put it mildly, is an awkward kid. 

The movie starts with a scene that takes place later on in the story. 

It's Halloween night and Jamie is dressed in a not-so-well-executed ghost costume. 

He walks up to an older kid named Freddy Phelps (Paul Grisham). We see a quick cutaway of their initial meeting on the school playground where Jaime asks Freddy if he can join his club. Freddy, in front of his girlfriend, Christina (Wendy Schmidt), responds by punching Jaime right in the face. Christina starts laughing hysterically. 

Jaime says he wants to talk to Freddy in private and show him something. So, for reasons beyond reason, Freddy follows Jaime to some remote location out in the woods. Jaime says he has a big bag full of jewels and stuff worth millions, and he wants to give to Freddy!

When they get to the bag, it's near a huge gaping pit. Freddy starts searching through the bag while standing on the edge of this pit. Jaime sneaks up behind him and pushes him in. 

The movie then goes to the beginning of the story. 

Other people, kids and adults, around town are pretty mean to Jaime. His one friend is his teddy bear which he often talks to. The bear's responses are spoken in Jaime's voice. So, the audience is led to believe it's all in Jaime's head. Or is it?

You see, Jaime as at "that" age. Puberty. He's developed a creepy obsession with females. 

Sammy Snyders as Jaime in 'The Pit.'

Jaime is forced to stay after school and write lines on the chalkboard for bringing a book of nude photography to school. Not pornography necessarily. 

The front page is cut out. Jaime claims the book was in that condition when he checked it out from the library. 

His teacher brings it to the library and hands it over to librarian Marg Livingstone (Laura Hollingsworth). Marg doesn't need an explanation as to who had the book and cut out the front page. 

She knows without a doubt Jaime is responsible. 

Later, his parents take off on a business trip and hire a babysitter named Sandy O'Reilly (Jeannie Elias) to look after Jaime. She's an attractive psychology student whom Jaime takes a quick liking to. 

Once the parents are gone, Jaime wastes little time in bluntly asking if she has a boyfriend. 

He then does a bunch of other weird stuff like watching her sleep, and then admitting to it like it's no big deal. He also asks her if she'll help give him a bath. Though she thinks he's too old for that, she agrees anyways along as there's enough bubbles in the water to provide cover. It's awkward just mentioning it.  

During a conversation at breakfast, Jaime tells Sandy he has a secret he wants to reveal. 

He says that he found a pit in the forest with some weird goblin-looking creatures called trogs living inside it. Jaime calls them tralalogs. 

And he feeds these tralalogs raw meat. 

Jaime starts stealing cash from Sandy's purse to buy meat for them. Then he starts luring people who mistreat him to the pit where he then pushes them in for the tralalogs to feast on, including Freddy and his girlfriend, Christina, on Halloween night. We get to watch that scene play out a second time later in the movie. 

When he first tells Sandy about these creatures, she obviously doesn't believe him. 

Later, after she's had enough of his creepy behavior like his sneaking into the bathroom while she's showering and writing "I love you" on the mirror, she says she'll go see this pit if he cuts his disturbing behavior. 

They go to the pit, and Sandy is shocked to see these creatures are in fact real. She insists on getting specialists out to study these things - the discovery of some new species. 

Jaime doesn't care much for that idea, and after arguing about, Sandy accidentally falls into the pit. He tries to save her but can't, and she becomes the next meal for the tralalogs. 

Jaime breaks down in his room, convincing himself Sandy's death is not his fault. 

It's implied early on that his ragged teddy bear's responses are all in Jaime's head. But in one scene, the bear moves on its own. God knows what Jaime has put this bear through during his alone time.

Anyways, out of anger or frustration, Jamie lowers a rope into the pit to let the creatures out. Carnage quickly ensues as they start eating innocent people around town. 

Towners create a militia to hunt down the tralalogs. They round them up back to the pit and shoot them all. They tell everyone that these creatures are nothing but a pack of rabid dogs. 

After, Jamie's parents take him to live with his grandparents. Once he arrives at their place, he meets a girl his age named Alicia who suggests they should play together. Jaime is all to happy to have an actual friend, though he has kept his teddy bear. 

Alicia has him chase her into the woods where, behold, she has a pit of her own. 

This movie is bad. Yet seldom have I watched a bad movie with such a satisfying ending. 

The opening scene with the flashback of Jaime asking Freddy to be in his club, resulting in a punch in the face, leads the audience to believe Jaime to be a sympathetic character. That dissolves quickly.

Jaime isn't supposed to be a likeable character, nor is he meant to be sympathetic. Jaime is a disturbed kid whose actions go from creepy to outright disturbing and terrible. 

Once he crosses those boundaries way past adolescent curiosity in sex, he goes into the realm of murder and stalking, enjoying it all the while. Disturbed isn't a big enough word. 

Honestly, my first reaction after watching "The Pit" was to make fun of it, which is pretty easy to do. I have to applaud Sammy Snyders for his performance. That's not an attempt at pandering, either. Kudos to him for portraying an awkward kid so well that it makes the audience feel pretty damn awkward, too. 

For Snyders to portray such a twisted problematic kid whom the audience is meant to take a disliking to, and do it convincingly deserves recognition. By the third act of the movie, I couldn't blame Freddy for punching Jaime right in the face. I couldn't help laugh along with Christina, too. I don't encourage bullying, or anything like that. Nevertheless, that has to be the expected reaction after seeing what kind of kid Jaime is, and what he's willing to do to other people. In one scene, he calls Marg from a pay phone, and plays a pre-recorded message telling her that her niece has been kidnapped. If she wants to see her niece again, she has to stand in her front room window and remove her shirt. And she does, fearing the call is real. Jaime, meanwhile, is hiding in her bushes with a Polaroid. And when Marg is standing there, in walks her niece.  

A lot of the lines sound horribly scripted, many scenes are uncomfortable to watch, and other scenes get a laugh when that's not the intended reaction. Seldom have I shouted "you can't be serious" several times during one movie.  Still, it all manages to work in telling an entertaining horror story, which is weird for me to think since there's some creepy stuff in the movie, and I'm not referring to these tralalogs. But it really does entertain! I can see why "The Pit" has a cult following. I want to be among these followers, mainly for Snyders's performance.

The mystery behind Jaime's teddy bear has no explanation. Is there correlation between the tralalogs and this bear? Who knows? It's never explained. There are tralalogs living in a pit, and Jaime's teddy bear is alive somehow. 

I can't say "The Pit" is a good movie. It's not. For all the awful stuff in this movie, it's not forgettable. Again, my hat is off to Snyders for his truly and sincerely unforgettable performance!