The Pit (1981)

Director: Lew Lehman

Starring: Sammy Snyders, Jeannie Elias, Sonja Smits

A solitary and strange preteen boy wreaks revenge on his harassers when he makes a disturbing discovery in the depth of a forest.

12-Year old Jamie has no friends. He has trouble getting to know anyone. Some even refer to him as a nutcase. His best friend is Teddy, his teddy bear.

When Jamie’s parents go away for a while, 24-year old babysitter/housekeeper Sandy stays with Jamie. At the age where Jamie is reaching puberty, he has magazines of nude girls. He also soon develops a crush on Sandy, despite her being much older than him. He even gets jealous of her boyfriend.

Much of the film revolves around the friendship (I’m being careful not to use the term relationship here) between Jamie and Sandy and in a way this set-up proves there to be something seriously wrong with Jamie. Jamie has a secret, which he feels confident enough to share with Sandy: he discovered a big hole (or pit) in the ground in the woods. At the bottom of this pit lives Trogs (or small Trolls), which he feeds raw meat.

When he has no more money to buy meat, Teddy suggests he feeds the Trogs all the people who are nasty to him (Jamie). It is never clear whether the teddy bear actually has a life of its own, or whether it is just voices in Jamie’s head, and pretending to be Teddy talking to him.

With very little horror elements shown to the audience (except for one scene), the film is mostly a psychological horror about a young boy with tendencies to harm people. I suppose one could view this as a character study.

Unfortunately, when the killings started towards the end, the film looked cheap. The creature effects were not so well done. The film then also has an anti-climax ending. I did like the film’s final moment, though.

Would I watch it again? No.

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