With the seventh edition of the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Fest now underway, it seems to appropriate to spool up something from the Great White North. This week’s VHS is Lew Lehman’s 1981 flick The Pit.
When awkward twelve-year-old Jamie (Sammy Snyders) discovers
several “Trolologs” in a hole in the forest, he goes to increasingly grisly
lengths to keep them fed.
The Pit is such a wonderfully strange movie. Having
discovered it during my video store jockey days, it’s really the gift that
keeps on giving in that not only do you have a weirdo kid – or “funny person”
as one of his tormentors calls him – who talks to his teddy bear, but also
carnivorous monsters in the woods. It’s also a bit unusual in that it’s a Canadian
production, mostly shot in Wisconsin (the interior pit sequences were done in
Toronto according to Imdb) because it’s often the other way around.
Snyders puts in a terrific off-kilter performance as Jamie
and considering how bizarre the script must have read, I’m always impressed by how much he
committed to it. It would’ve been so easy to go over the top, but he plays
everything so matter-of-fact. Sadly, The Pit was one of the last things he
did before leaving the biz.
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| Sammy Snyders as Jamie in The Pit |
I find Jamie such an interesting subject because he’s
clearly a bit off, but not what I would consider evil in the sense we usually
see in killer kid flicks. Sure, he’s feeding people to his “pets”, but when you
take into account a good majority of the meat were either bullies or just mean
folk, it’s sometimes hard not to root for him. He’s weird as fuck to be sure
and his obsession with naked ladies probably would’ve escalated, but he ain’t
straight up Children of the Corn is what I’m saying.
Also, his babysitter Sandy (Jeannie Elias) may have left her
guide book at home. What was she was thinking when she, after being expressly
told that Jamie is susceptible to crushes, decides to a) wash Jamie’s back in
the tub and b) backpedal when she says she has a boyfriend – “Well, he isn't really what you'd call a boyfriend, he's just a friend.” WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
Mind you, this ill-advised behaviour does fall in line with
the bonkers tone of the piece. Laughing
out loud as Jamie pushes an old lady in a wheelchair through a field to her
doom is inevitable, but watching him blackmail his neighbour into undressing at
her front window, not so much. I beg to differ with the Sheriff who exclaimed
he moved to this town because nothing ever happens.
If there was a critique of The Pit, it would be the pacing,
as things come in fits and starts, most noticeably when the opening sequence is
replayed (in its entirety I might add) later in the picture. It could also be
accused of going on a little too long. After the movie reaches its logical
conclusion the narrative completely abandons Jamie for like fifteen minutes,
while it turns into Humanoids From The Deep. I’m not going to complain too
much, as it was clearly an attempt to add more gore and nudity, but having a
bunch of hicks hunt down the Trolologs only served to shine a empathetic light
on them. I also want to take this opportunity to give it up for those hairy
dudes because they ruled.
I love this movie, but every time I watch it I am always left
wondering… What happened to Teddy? A throwaway scene suggested that Teddy was
actually sentient so I’ve always wondered what happened to him after Jamie left
to play with his new friend, Alicia.
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