The Pit (1981)

 

I'm going to head up north of the border to Canada for our next offering with the 1981 film The Pit, it's also known as Teddy.  It's interesting in that what the finished product is and what it was originally intended to be were very different.  The screenplay, written by Ian Stewart, was about an eight year old boy who creates imaginary creatures he calls the Tra-la-logs.  The story was much darker and more serious than what was presented by director Lew Lehman.  The finished product Lehmen presents here is about a twelve year old boy named Jamie, who is going through the early stages of puberty.  He is in love with his baby sitter Sandy who is a collage student.  Jamie is picked on by other kids and adults alike so he has no friends.  Jamie finds a deep hole in the forest that contains monsters he calls Trogs.  He steals money in order to buy meat to take to the pit to feed them.

 

 

Jamie talks to Teddy, his stuffed bear and his only friend.  Jamie rapidly becomes pretty creepy by dropping his napkin on the floor so he can go under the table and look up Sandy's skirt.  When his parents go away Sandy stays at Jamie's house.  He goes into Sandy's room where he watches her sleep.  Later he asks Sandy to give him a bath and for a twelve year old boy that's a little disturbing.  He manipulates a woman into taking off her clothes as he takes Polaroids of her outside her window.  When Jamie runs out of ideas how to feed the Trogs, Teddy suggests feeding them people.  Jamie agrees and begins to feed the people that torment him to the Trogs.  Jamie is played by Sammy Snyder who was a Canadian child star during the late 70's.  He played Tom Sawyer in a Canadian TV series based on the Mark Twain books.  Snyder also appeared in the second and final season of The Baxters, a sitcom developed by Norman Lear.  Also starring as Sandy is Jeannie Elias who would go on to do voice acting in several animated films such as Over the Hedge, The Wild, and The Legend of Frosty the Snowman.  The movie also features Sonja Smits who also starred in Videodrome and Owning Mahowny.

 

This psychological thriller/creature feature/evil kid mashup is a different breed altogether.  I have to give it some points for creativity as I'm not sure I've ever really seen anything like this before.  I mentioned earlier that Lehmen added humor to the script but I have to be honest, I didn't find much humor in here.  That's not really a bad thing however.  The creature makeup and effects are serviceable even though for most of the film we only see them in the dimly lit pit.  When they do eventually get out of the pit we see less of them.  I also have no complaints about the acting.  I guess my only complaint is I'm not really sure why everybody in town dislikes Jamie.  That's never really explained.  My only other gripe is while a good actor, Sammy Snyder didn't look the part to be honest.  I guess he was cast due to him being a child star in Canada at the time so they wanted to cash in on that.  Like I said the film is OK, nothing great but nothing horrible.  I'll go three dead bodies in a corn field out of five.  The originality of the story gives it a half a star boost that puts it close to "good".