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Released by: Kino Studio Classics
Released on: October 18th, 2016.
Director: Lew Lehman
Cast: Sammy Snyders, Jeannie Elias, Sonja Smith, Laura Hollingsworth, Richard Alden
Year: 1981
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The Movie:
Jamie Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) is a weird kid. He's got a thing for Sandy O'Reilly (Jeannie Elias), his pretty babysitter, but that's not weird. He's a twelve year old boy and twelve year old boys typically like pretty girls. No, Jamie is weird for other reasons - chief amongst those being the fact that his teddy bear talks to him and puts bad ideas in his head AND the fact that he's befriended a quartet of monsters that live at the bottom of a pit out in the nearby woods. Jamie calls these things the Tra-la-lags and he has an unusually close relationship with them. He's also got a thing for the town librarian
Those Tra-la-lags, however, they're not really a cute or friendly as you might think. Jamie uses this to his advantage when one of his classmates, a bitchy girl named Abergail (Andrea Schwartz) makes fun of him. He lures her out into the woods, tosses her into the pit, and voila! Problem solved. When Jamie gets annoyed at Allan (Gerard Jordan), a football player who has eyes for Sandy, he tosses him into the pit as well, followed shortly by an old woman in a wheelchair named Miss Oliphant (Lillian Graham) who accuses Jamie of turning into a hippie! Yeah, pretty much anyone who pisses this kid off gets tossed into the pit and done away with by the Tra-la-lags - a bully named Freddy (Paul Grisham) and his girlfriend (Wendy Schmidt)… really anyone he doesn't like.
When Jamie runs out of people to throw into the pit, he lowers down a rope and unleashes the Tra-la-lags on the town, at which point they wreak some havoc, get into trouble with some horny skinny-dipping teens and amazingly confound the town's dimwitted police force.
Jamie would be a much more sympathetic character if he weren't into peeping on girls and getting revenge. There's very little about him that seems wholesome, in fact, he comes across as a weird pervert. While it's easy to understand why he'd want to get back against those who pick on him, he takes things to a pretty insane extreme going after not only bullies, but anyone who he sees as a potential roadblock to get with his foxy babysitter. Dude's got issues, and they're not the kind of issues that endear him to an audience. Having said all that, Jamie's pervy, mean-spirited ways are exactly the reason that this movie stands out. He's one of the weirdest 'killer kids' in the pantheon of killer kid movies and the fact that he communicates to a weird talking teddy bear (whose head spins around, no less!) just sort of adds yet another layer of 'wtf' to his character.
Sammy Snyders (who once appeared in an episode of the great Canadian TV series The Littlest Hobo) plays this role pretty much perfectly. He's got very intense eyes underneath that bowl cut and his gives off a super creepy vibe. You wouldn't want this kid hanging around your neighborhood - there's something off about him. Full credit to Snyders for doing a bang up job making Jamie so unforgettably weird!
The only film ever directed by Lew Lehman, most of The Pit was shot in Wisconsin with a cast made up almost entirely of Canadians. The locations work well, however. The small town setting makes for the right sort of backdrop off of which to stage a strange tale like this. Writer Ian Stuart has noted more than once (including on the supplements accompanying the movie on this Blu-ray) that his original script was fairly bastardized in that it was much darker when handed in and was turned into a more commercially viable horror picture. Either way, what's here works on its own unusual level. The Pit is a very strange film, definitely one of a kind.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Pit lands on Blu-ray from Kino's Studio Classics line in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation framed at 1.78.1 looking very good. Some minor print damage shows up here and there -small scratches and specks - but for the most part the picture is pretty clean. Color reproduction looks dead on, completely appropriate to the period in which the film was shot, while black levels are usually very strong if occasionally closer to dark grey in some scenes. Detail and texture are much stronger here than on the old DVD release and there are no issues with obvious compression artifacts (though some mild ones do pop up now and then), edge enhancement or noise reduction.
The audio is handled by a DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in English, there are no alternate language options or subtitles offered. Clarity of the track is fine with clean, clear dialogue present throughout. The score is nicely balanced with a fair bit of weight and depth to it and the sound effects have good presence as well. There are no issues with any hiss or distortion to note, the film sounds just fine here.
Extras start off with an audio commentary from film historians Paul Corupe and Jason Pichonsky that does a pretty fine job of tracing this odd movie's history from how the producer came to shoot the movie in Canada to the film's editing to some of the surprise casting that took place during the production.
The disc also features some interesting interviews, the first of which is a sixteen minute piece with actor Sammy Snyder who talks about his background as a dancer, how that led into acting on both TV shows and in feature films, what it was like on set and working with the director. Actress Jeannie Elias gets seven minutes in front of the camera to talk about this, her only feature film credit. She talks about how she was initially cast, her thoughts on the picture and what she's been up to since this movie was made. Screenwriter Ian Stuart gets a thirteen minute interview where he talks about how he feels his story was basically ruined in the final version of the film and how both the ending and the entire vibe of the film turned out to be completely different from what he wrote. Stuart's none too happy about what was done with the film and he doesn't mix words. Last but not least, composer Victor Davies shows up for eight minutes to talk about scoring the film, how he got into the composing business and what it was like working with Lehman on the film.
Static menus and chapter selection are included, but the film's theatrical trailer is sadly nowhere to be found (though we get some fun bonus trailers for other Kino releases like Beware! The Blob, Jennifer, Burnt Offerings, Needful Things and House Of The Long Shadows).
The Final Word:
The Pit is creepy. It's bizarre. It's unsettling and strange, a story that straddles the line between horror and some unexpected sleaze in its own inimitable style. Fans of offbeat horror pictures will eat this one up, and Kino's Blu-ray, nicely restored and loaded with extras, is a great way to check it out. Don't let this one pass you by.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
