1980s Bullies Plus A Monster Hole Equals THE PIT

The 80s definitely had a different type of bully then what kids are use to in this day and age.

This film drove home that point in the first five minutes. In this movie cyber bullies are replaced by dudes that punch you dead in the face while little girls laugh hysterically.

In director Lew Lehman's movie 'The Pit', Jamie Benjamin (played by child actor Sammy Snyder) is a kid that is not only bullied but basically harassed, talked down to, and hated by the whole neighborhood.

I can't really tell you why either. The movie somehow attempts to get you to believe the kid is weird but he only really did one odd thing in the entire film.

Well, besides feeding his tormentors to prehistoric creatures in a pit in the woods. My point is he is weird but he doesn't do anything that justifies everyone hating him so much. 

 This is 1981, so bullies have to be over the top and the adults have to be just as nutty and verbally abusive. There is no, "Oh, what about the children? Won't somebody please think about the children!" They could give a good got damn about this kid. I guess that step in me realizing I'm in for yet another cult film.

This is a straight creature feature. Only thing is the way the script, by writer Ian A. Stuart, is written I could swear they want us to root for the creatures in the hole.  Everyone in this film is so unlikable that I found myself anticipating their demise. I think the only one I could halfway stomach was the babysitter. Again, I said halfway.

Alfred Hitchock once said, "Putting two people at a table and having a bomb explodes is not suspense. Putting two people at a table with a ticking time bomb beneath it, is suspense." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the drift. The point is, this movie for all of its cheese factor put the ticking time bomb under the table a lot.

You can see the pit. You know what is inside the pit. The characters in the movie don't know about the pit so every time anyone gets close it plays on that. What kills it is the death start to happen way too quickly. They went from looking a bit like
cleverly set up accidents to just push them in the hole.

I guess in a weird way the violent way in which this little boy disposed of his "haters" gives him a seat at the cult movie table. But so does the fact that this is a movie about a killer kid in the vein of 'The Bad Seed'. Well that and the fact that he is like 12 and talks to a teddy bear like it's real.

While this film is a bit on the long side it was worth it to stay until the very end. That ending was actually more satisfying than a lot of endings in big budget movies today. That alone bumps this movie up a chair at the cult film table with a 3 and 1/2 popcorns.


THE PIT (Lew Lehman, 1981) Trailer from Jon Dieringer on Vimeo.