Monster Kid Memories

Scream Edition

Hello all. I truly meant to debut this section of the blog sometime ago, however, as with everything that gets put on the back burner, life's other responsibilities kept me away from said task. So unfortunately, Monster Kid Memories, before it even got its proper cardinal presentation, is making its first appearance in the form of a "special edition". But worry not dear readers, you'll live, fun will be had, my reflective brain power will get flexed and I'll most likely embarrass myself several times over along the way.

What is Monster Kid Memories you ask? Why, it's really nothing more than me reminiscing about moments from my childhood that relate to me being a great big horror nut (apparently from inception onwards). For the purposes of excusing certain behavior (that in hindsight is more than a little bit embarrassing), my "childhood" heretofore is going to encompass ages 1 - 18. Anything that I partook in or did after the age of 18, is fair game for you to ridicule or judge me on. I'll own it.

The germ of this idea, to compose articles about such personal instances from my past, was sown during my writing of the review for Lew Lehman's The Pit (1981, the review can be found here). I found it near impossible to share my feelings about the film's plot without relating some of my own situations from my childhood beforehand, seeing as how nearly every frame of that film inspired some bizarre trip down memory lane. Chiefly being that much like the pint-sized protagonist of that film, how I was a very strange little child (to put it mildly), obsessed with death, destruction, monsters, madmen and copious amounts of the red stuff. I was Jaime Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) and he was me (save for the fact that the only Trog-like abominations in my life, were those created in my overworked imagination). The point is, I had a lot of fun writing that review and revisiting my sordid childhood in such a manner. It made me want to do it again, it made me want to remember more (in truth, a rather rare occurrence in my life as I've spent the better part of the last decade attempting to forget the majority of my early years for other less savory reasons). Admittedly, this endeavor isn't something that I imagine will be the easiest thing to do, as my hypochondriac nature leads me to believe that I am currently suffering from either unknown brain trauma, meningitis, epilepsy, an early onset of Alzheimer's or some sort of Fringe-esque rapid aging, as my once sharp-as-a-tack memory is nearly nonexistent these days (ask me what I ate 4 hours ago and a swirl of gray fog obscures the memory in my mind, truly frustrating and more than a bit unnerving). However, I will do the best I can with what I can. No James Frey recollections here. Promise. Just the cold hard truth, even if at times it seems so over the top, so unlikely that that I wasn't under constant psychiatric care, so strange that it must be fiction, I assure you dear readers, it isn't.

I Want To Play A Game


Picture the setting. It is night. The darkness is utter and complete, the kind of darkness one finds themselves in when removed from the comforting environs of a well lit city and transplanted to its rural outskirts, where only the stars and a dim moon will light your way. My mother and step-father's relatively large, two-story country home (complete with enormous barn). Miles from any town, neighboring an empty, expansive golf course and with the closest houses no more than 200 yards away (many of them, buried deep within the woods that surrounded our house to the north). In short, very reminiscent of Casey Becker's (Drew Barrymore) abode from the very first Scream (minus the beautiful vineyard, this was after all, Indiana). And the evening I was sharing with my then-fiance Mike, was likewise very similar to the one Casey was about to have with her boyfriend, dearly departed and gutted Steven Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls); scary movies on the TV, enjoying a snugly evening in the middle of nowhere, capitalizing on the fact that my parents were out of town and I had the house to myself with my beau. Except, midway through the evening, watching fear flicks and spooning on the couch didn't sound as exciting anymore. Something more...adventurous was in order. Something more lively. At first, inspiration came to me in the form of playing a game of hide-and-go-seek (an activity that me and a select group of friends still got up to from time to time, but in slightly more creepy environments like the local haunted spot Devil's Hollow or the biggest cemetery in town but more on those games some other time). However, just playing hide and seek didn't seem nearly enough...there needed to be something more. Then, like a lightning bolt, it struck me, "let's play Scream!" Yes, I actually said that, and yes we actually did "play Scream". Here is how.

The object of the game was very simple; There would be the victim (Mike, and later changed to accommodate victims, as our friend Jasmine joined in on the fun) and the maniac (me, decked out Ghostface mask and a huge black coat reminiscent of Candyman's wardrobe). All the victim was required to do, was find away into the locked up house from outside (there was only ever one way inside, known only to me), find the hidden set of car keys, escape the house, enter my locked car and drive it off the property to "safety". There were catches that made accomplishing this, very difficult. Many of them. First off, in keeping with the hide-and-go-seek nature of the game, the victim could only be "tagged" three times and they would lose, and by "tagged" I mean "stabbed" with a fake plastic knife or hand scythe (my favorite, shades of Children of the Corn here) that I would wield, and by lose I mean "die". The game was played within the pitch black house and the equally dark, unlit property. No lights were allowed to be turned on by the victims (nor I) and they had to rely on their eyes adjusting either to the dark as they crept about trying to remain undetected, or they had to use what little light I provided them to navigate through the rooms (usually a single television set playing a horror movie). There senses were further fucked by the fact that I would have playing in the house, a horror film score so loud, that it was near impossible to communicate with another party or hear me sneaking up behind them. A horror film score so loud that I imagine in the quite countryside, it could be heard a mile away in the still of the night. A horror score so loud that you couldn't help but feel like you were smack dab in the middle of some nightmarish scenario straight out of a scary movie, or unwittingly having found yourself stumbling into one (my film score collection wasn't the gargantuan beast that it is today, so I usually employed Don Davis' House on Haunted Hill remake soundtrack, to hair-raising effect, the sheer volume that I played it at being enough to put anyone on edge, the track Epiphanic Evelyn being a standout example ). Additionally, like any victim in a good scary movie, they were allowed to fight back against my "attacks", utilizing anything within arms reach that would neither break, nor seriously harm someone (pillows, couch cushions and the like). They were not allowed to lock doors behind them in an effort to evade me. They could barricade the doors with their bodies or other objects, but that was all. In most cases the only option was find some dark corner to make themselves very small in, or tuck themselves away in the back of some dark as pitch closet and be very very still and very very quite. To make things even more intense, if one found themselves injured in the duration of the game (me or them), they were to pick themselves up and keep going, limping or crawling their way to temporary safety somewhere. The game would only stop if they or I seriously hurt ourselves (and considering how genuinely freaked out one could get in the middle of playing, it's a wonder one of us didn't break our neck as there were instances of falling down the stairs and tripping over objects in the yard only to go flying face first into the dirt). Lastly, acquiring hidden car keys in a lightless house is hard in the best of circumstances, finding them using only select, odd clues placed about to point you in the right direction is quite another thing entirely, deciphering the aforementioned clues while being stalked by a masked "killer" was difficult to the extreme. I would set up these clues while the other players would drive around the countryside, waiting to pass by the house and see that the outside porch light had been turned off (the indication that the game had begun and they were to park the car and make their way inside). Sometimes they won and escaped with their lives, other times they weren't so lucky and the game ended with their "lifeless, bloody corpses strewn about on the ground." Or something to that effect.

The Highlights Reel


One reason I was constantly the killer while playing Scream (with the exception of one game where I spent 3 hours nearly peeing my pants, hiding underneath beds and inside closets), was because plain and simply, I am a control freak. I wasn't entirely sure either Mike or Jasmine had the enthusiasm to set up intricate clues or maintain the momentum of coming on hard and strong for an "attack" but then know when to retreat a bit to maximize tension and prolong the chase thereby enhancing the overall terror. Possibly either one of them would have done just fine, but like I said, control freak.

Below you will find a roster of some of the games' highlights, in no particular order or context.

- Check The Backseat
There was one instance when we were playing Scream where I held off stalking Mike and Jasmine in the beginning while they were still trying to find a way inside the house. Instead, I waited inside the backseat of my parents' SUV that was parked in the dark garage. The reason being that I had left the door that adjoined the garage to the house the only one unlocked and their only way inside. To reach this door, one of them would have to shimmy on their stomach beneath the garage door that I had left open only a foot off of the ground. When they passed (it turned out to be Mike) I threw the SUV door open behind them and sprung my attack (missing him). But the chase had begun and this instance led to this...

- Open The Door!
Mike had fled into the house through the garage, leaving me standing there for a moment deciding what my next plan of action was. Hearing Jasmine's calls of "Mike? Mike?" from the other side of the enormous garage door, I quickly decided. Stealthily moving to a small gap between door and floor, I took a swipe at her unsuspecting form, I missed but managed to send her screaming to the front door where she proceeded to bang and holler and beg Mike to open the door "quickly, now, NOW". I think I stood there for a moment, dumfounded over the fact that I had just recreated within the game, and unintentionally at that, the famous scene from the climax of John Carpenter's Halloween. Specifically, the one where Jaime Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode finds herself locked out of her house with an ever encroaching Michael Myers. Yes really. However, due to the fact that I approached with his same slow and deliberate pace (I couldn't really run like Ghostface mind you, I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day), Mike caught to the front door in the nick of time and let Jasmine inside, just as I was upon her.

There are other crazy moments to be sure. Like the time I hid the car keys on the roof during a rainstorm (how we didn't simultaneously break our necks or destroy my parent's floors by tracking mud everywhere is a miracle, but the kind of miracle that one at that age only recognizes in hindsight). Or the time Jasmine and I (when I was playing as a victim for a change) was hiding in the darkness of my parent's walk in closet (which itself led into another walk in closet, with two entrances to boot, one almost a cleverly hidden mirror), clinging to one another and trying to not pee our pants until one of those closet doors were ripped open and standing there in the hazy shadows was Ghostface (Mike), knife raised and at the ready and I did just that, pee my pants. A little. I could go on certainly and if I concentrated hard enough I'm sure I could scare up more noteworthy memories from our games. But I think you get the general idea dear readers.

Conclusion

As I promised earlier, what I just shared with you probably makes many of you wonder how I wasn't under constant scrutiny from trained psychiatric professionals. Beats me. Maybe I should have been. However, I am more inclined to view those Scream games for what I believe they really were; just a couple of extremely bored, crazy kids utilizing their imaginations and taking a game of hide-and-go-seek to the next, scare-the-hell-out-of-themselves level. And we did scare the ever living hell out of ourselves. It was as if for a time, we created for ourselves for the cost of nothing more than a dime store Halloween mask, our very own Haunted House. Only there was no admission, it was open year round (or rather, whenever my parents were out of town) and it operated by our rules. The only rule that was really important though being the one where we gave each other the fright of our lives and I can't stress how much we did just that. Ever since those days, it's relatively easy to watch some slasher film and think to oneself "I kinda know what that feels like; the pursuit, the hiding, the screaming, the fear...I lived it." Sorta.

Film Review - The Pit

They don't eat chocolate bars.


I was one of those children. Yeah, you know the kind and if you are reading this blog now in adulthood, chances are you were one of those children too. From the earliest age onwards I had an "unhealthy" affinity for the genre, in any form. Movies, books, comics, magazines, it mattered not. Anything even remotely considered horror was like a nugget of food to a starving mouth for your little pint sized host. When I was at my youngest, the holy trinity of horror films for me and the ones that were arguably the most influential in my early years, were Jaws, Poltergeist and Gremlins (incidentally all Spielberg vehicles in one way or another). This was most likely due to the fact that they were all rated either PG or PG-13, and fell within my parent's limitations of what I was allowed to watch.

Seeing as I was also one of those lonely, strange children with next to no friends (looking back, I attribute this to my even then apparent homosexuality, which I believe made my less than butch personality off-putting to most boys, subject to ridicule and confusing to most girls) I regularly entertained myself by escaping into my overly heightened imagination. I took to reenacting key scenes from my favorite horror films routinely, going so far to sound like a screeching banshee (I imagine) as I was constantly "humming" (or something akin to that) the scores from the films I was, er, "interpreting". Diane Freeling's (JoBeth Williams of Poltergeist, to this day still one of my favorite ladies to grace our genre) frantic, empty swimming pool mudslide? I reenacted it routinely in the back of my parent's car (we didn't buckle up back then) utilizing the backseat itself as the "slanted, slippery side of the swimming pool", the space above it and beneath the window as my "goal" and a rather realistic looking decrepit skull (a Halloween decoration, complete with a long mane of filthy hair) that would "spring forth from the ground" (rather simply, held in my hand and shoved into my own face) ala the film and "frighten" me so badly that I would then "slide" back down to the bottom of the "pool" (the foot well of the backseat) and start again, ad infinitum. Jaws? Every other day at the local swimming pool, the summer vacations to Daytona Beach (before my onset on shark phobia) and occasionally the bathtub. Using my hand as the "shark fin" slicing through the surface of the water, "humming" the legendary theme ("dum dum, dum dum, dum dum dum dum dum") it would draw nearer and nearer to my "horrified" face and then, "attack" from beneath me. Limbs flailing, water splashing, my little prepubescent voice screaming for all it was worth. I would eventually "expire" and allow myself to sink to the bottom of the pool, in my mind's eye, the water now clouded red. I imagine I kept the lifeguards on their toes. Gremlins? Well, that was easy. Growing up, my security blanket was a life-sized stuffed doll of Gizmo himself. There wasn't anywhere he didn't go with me and always, there were nasty gremlins up to no good that him and I would have to dispatch. Imagine a 5 year old child continuously "singing" Jerry Goldsmith's "The Gremlin Rag" day in and day out and you might have a small estimation of what my family endured on a routine basis. As the eighties continued, other films got added to my weekly watch list (amazing that we didn't just buy them, as we certainly gave the video store a small fortune with the amount of times I rented them) The Gate, Critters, Grizzly, Ghoulies, The Monster Squad and The Midnight Hour were among some of the ones my impressionable eyes were allowed to watch, but as always, I was to watch them alone.


Throughout all of this, my family, my teachers and just about any adult in a position of authority became increasingly concerned for my mental well being, the million dollar question of the day (everyday) apparently being "What is wrong with that child?" or "What are we going to do about his unhealthy preoccupation with these sick horror movies?". I'm certain more than a few of you were asked questions similar to these in your youth. Without fail, every time I would procure an issue of some horror related magazine, it would be confiscated by a teacher and shoved into the principal's desk drawer never to be seen again. "Sick, sick sick." I can still hear the principal murmuring. My explanation that those stills of gore and carnage that graced the magazine's glossy pages were nothing more than latex and corn syrup was irrelevant, apparently. Every time I'd make it 200 some pages into a Stephen King novel that I would secretly check out from the public library unbeknownst to my parents (in the 4th grade mind you) the book would be (you guessed it) confiscated. Shortly thereafter I would be marched down to the elementary school library and told to pick out something more "appropriate". I scanned the shelves. The
Bobbsy Twins. The Boxcar Children. Now, my stomach was churning as obviously, nothing piqued my interest. I attempted to reason with the teachers that they should be grateful that I am reading at all, let alone something that was such a massive undertaking for someone of my age (the confiscated Pet Semetary was 416 pages long, I was 10 years old, you follow me). They scoffed at this of course and as with all my other (perfectly sound) reasonings, it ultimately fell on deaf ears. I believe I compromised (humored) and checked out a copy of Bunnicula. Two years later, my father (amidst one of his confused, born again phases) took boxes of over 50 some young adult horror novels of mine (mostly Fear Street, Christopher Pike type stuff) and dozens of reprints of EC's Tales / Vault / Haunt comics, out to the country and burned them. Yes, burned them, and he made me watch. I still tell my father that there is a special place in hell for those that burn books, any books. Whereas my Grandfather is most certainly reserved a cushy place in heaven for having rescued one of said boxes on my behalf (which he later presented to me like a Christmas gift in July). Bless him.

The battle of wills between me and the adults in my life over the genre continued unabated until it finally fizzled out around the age of 16. Mostly because my parents threw in the towel more than anything else. Clearly it was in my blood, and one way or another, I was gonna watch horror movies and read scary literature no matter how many times my books were taken away from me or the films deemed forbidden. So, after the onset of puberty, my love of horror grew as I was now relatively free of parental supervision and able to maintain a rental account at our local video store on my own. Though I was still a lonesome horror movie nut. I never had as friends, any like minded individuals who shared my obsession with all those scary and gross things that I now had blazing across my television screen on a daily basis. Sure, I had friends who would watch them, but more often then naught they seemed more interested in ripping the films a new one for dated SFX, less than stellar acting, or the inherent silliness of many horror movie's story lines. Which wasn't necessarily what I was looking for. I'd make my monthly trip into our local newsstand to make my routine purchase of the latest issue of Fangoria and every time I would pause and wonder to myself where the other Fangoria readers were in town. I wasn't the only one purchasing it, so where were all the horror movie fans that I could potentially befriend and hit it off with? Where were the people who knew not only who Dario Argento was, but also knew his entire filmography like the back of their hand? Where were the people who had heard of obscure cult films like Lets Scare Jessica to Death, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things or any number of titles that I was now discovering? Where were the people who had posters of Stan Winston or Tom Savini hanging on their bedroom walls? They were nowhere to be found, ultimately, and as it turns out, I wouldn't actually meet anyone with these interests until I was in my mid-twenties. Which brings me to my friends James and Arthur and finally, The Pit.


I met both James and Arthur some years ago at Cinema Wasteland (Cleveland Ohio's premier drive-in cinema expo) when they were still both heavily into their horror host routine (Gravedigger Grimm and Art Wolf, respectively). Though nothing came of our meeting initially, (they were at the time, a bit younger than I and they lived some ways away from me too) we've now forged a friendship born of a mutual love for all things horror related. However, in many ways, our tastes for the specific kinds of horror that we like, differs greatly. With Arthur, the worse the film is, the more he salivates over it frankly. With James, I have more of a kinship when it comes to appreciating similar types of horror. Well, sometimes. Like Arthur, he as an affinity for dreck I wouldn't go near with Victor Crowly's 8 foot long chainsaw (he hasn't been "allowed" to pick a movie to watch at our home since he made my husband and I endure New Year's Evil, and yes, he liked it and no, we did not). Also, it's common to find him calling me things like an "elitist make-no-sense artsy-horror-geek" among other colorful phrases. So, when this recent Christmas rolled around, I was hard pressed to think of something to get either one of them. You'd think it would be easy, knowing what kinds of things they are so dedicated to. Well, taking into consideration that they could (either one of them) open a moderately sized store of vintage horror memorabilia and used movies, it wasn't. Then I had my "duh" moment when it came to Arthur's gift. The ghost of his voice came floating back to me from this past summer, waxing enthusiastically about some obscure monster movie called The Pit. "Ah man it's SOOOOOO awesome! There are these Trogs, in this pit, and this little boys feeds people to 'em. I LOVED it, it's so good!" I had been aware of the film pre-Arthur's excited ranting (but had yet to see it), and I had heard everything but it being called a "good film". But then, it was being graded on Arthur's curve. Anyway, I quickly decided that we were going to get something Pit related for Arthur's Christmas gift. It started out we were going to get him a poster (then I realized that he already has a million film posters, and likely would not have room on his walls for another one, though he tells me that he "rotates them".) We then decided on a relatively cool Pit t-shirt that utilized the Embassy Home Entertainment VHS box art until I remembered (another "duh" moment) that Arthur doesn't even own the film, so why wouldn't I just get him that? Turning to eBay, the pickings were slim. It's only DVD release was as a split, two film release paired with Hellgate. I was certain that Arthur gets as irritated as I do when it comes to the tacky, double poster (or triple or more in some cases) box "art" for such releases, so I nixed that. I was left with choices between various VHS releases, one being advertised as an incredibly rare release from some distributor that I never heard of and whose name escapes me now. Knowing Arthur, I went with that one (the boy copies his DVDs onto Beta, trust me, he wouldn't mind it being VHS). A few weeks later his gift arrived, as did the happy accident of both boys stopping by soon thereafter. He loved his gift and as the night wore on, it became apparent what it was we were going to be doing. Gathering around the television upstairs in our living room, I fed the ancient videocassette of The Pit into my VCR (admittedly with a great deal of nervousness, it being less than 24 hours since the same VCR ate my copy of Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss) and the three of us took our places as the FBI warning flashed on screen. Arthur was pleased as a pig in shit, James was excited and I was apprehensive, but game. Fade into a (disappearing from age) overly dark scene of a children's outdoor, night time Halloween party, and we were off.

Okay, The Pit's plot is a mess, a gloriously fun mess, but a mess all the same. Lets not mince words no matter how much it seems as though people are retroactively heaping fanboy praise upon the movie as a whole (what's that about and where did that come from all of a sudden?) and no matter how much the story has charm in it's individual moments. The plot (or plots) revolve around little Jamie Benjamin (Sammy Snyders), a 12 year misfit equally misunderstood and hated by nearly all of the residents in the small town in which he resides. His sole friend is a stuffed teddy bear (aptly named, Teddy) that secretly talks to Jamie (and curiously sounds an awful lot like our morbid little squirt, if you follow) encouraging him to act out on his baser instincts and desires. Transitioning into puberty, Jamie is discovering his new found obsession with girls (his revolving door of babysitters), the human body (the mother of the little girl who routinely torments him), and sexuality as a whole (the books of erotic photography he steals from the town's library). However, being the little weirdo that he is, along with the (self?) destructive encouragement of Teddy, Jamie takes his hormonal interests to obsessive, perverted acts of criminal wrongdoing that would certainly land him on a sex offenders registry one day. When both his parents go away on an extended business trip, Jamie is left in the care of young, beautiful psych student Sandy O'Reilly (Jeannie Elias, resembling a cute-as-a-button cross between Friday the 13th's Robbi Morgan and Piranha's Belinda Balaski), whom he immediately falls madly in love with (who wouldn't, really).

In the neighboring forest just outside of town, Jamie stumbles upon the life altering discovery of a craterous hole in the ground, the titular pit. This isn't just any old hole in the ground however, this hole is inhabited by mysterious red eyed creatures resembling poverty row werewolves (though they are chessily effective). Still absent of any meaningful friendships, Jamie forges ahead in creating an even stranger alliance than that of his relationship with Teddy, and attempts to make nice with the ravenous beasts (which he names “Tra-la-logs”, or "Trogs" as in troglodytes) by offering them his chocolate bar. As it turns out, chocolate is not on their diet plan, Jamie quickly discovering that the only sustenance they are interested in is meat. Raw, blood red meat. Things begin innocently enough as Jamie quickly becomes the local butcher's no doubt best customer, purchasing pounds upon pounds of the red stuff to keep his new found friend's bellies full. But then his meager funds quickly dry up and he can no longer afford to feed the them.What's a slightly unbalanced boy of 12 to do? Teddy has a suggestion, feed the Trogs all the adults and children that routinely torment him on a daily basis. Sounds reasonable to me. Thus Jamie begins coaxing his enemies (real and perceived), one by one, to their gruesome doom.


What a hoot of a story. Uh, I mean what a hodgepodge of a plot. As it stands, either our young Jamie just wondered out of, or into The Twilight Zone, seeing as how he has an uncanny knack for attracting and befriending all manner of unrelated, supernatural entities (when in the last act, the ghost of one of Jamie's unintended victims begins to haunt him, it hardly stretches the film's already distended credibility). Or, the bulk of Ian A. Stuart’s original screenplay should never have been altered in the manner that it was. Considerably different from what has been committed to film, in the original story, Jamie was significantly younger (8 or 9 years old) and the Tra-la-logs (and I imagine Teddy) were nothing more than figments of his overworked imagination. It's sad really that once Lew Lehman came aboard to direct, that these elements were excised in favor of real flesh and blood monstrosities. Not because I have no love for the real deal and prefer "realistic" modern day explanations for such terrors (really, an occasionally crippling vexation found all too frequently in many movies these days) but because once that story thread was removed, that the Trogs are not real, the film becomes utterly ridiculous in it's asking us to swallow that Jamie has a possessed teddy bear capable of independent thought and influence and that Jamie discovers a pit full of hungry, ancient beasts that will devour his nemeses AND that his victims can return as ghosts to bedevil the boy. Individually, I could have suspended my disbelief with any one of those plotlines, but when mashed together with no rhyme or reason into the same narrative, The Pit asks way to much of it's audience. It is a story that anyone over the age of 8 can not, will not buy hook, line and sinker. This also being of course, where the film's reputation for being a horrid turd stems from. Yet, if director Lehman had stuck to the original screenplay, I hasten to speculate that The Pit would have indeed gone on to become at least a favorably remembered hidden gem, born forth from genuine, sporadic quality rather than apologetic, forgiving goodwill such as the type I am imparting on it. The remnants of this approach remain for those interested in looking for them. There is the aforementioned voice of Teddy (Jamie, c'mon you know it's Jamie). The psychological analysis that Sandy routinely attempts in a hopeful bid to come to a deeper understanding of her troubled young charge. And don't even get me started on the plethora of Freudian and Jungian motifs (how about the vaginal pit itself, for starters) found throughout the film in relation to Jamie's burgeoning sexuality (which by the way, is no incidental, throw away subplot; it's as key to understanding our anti-hero as anything else in the film). Not to say that The Pit probably wouldn't have retained some of it's other, rather glaring problems had that been the direction they went in. Hilariously, nobody screams when they are devoured and torn to pieces by the Trogs.The structure is still all over the place (story and character come to a complete stand still in the last act to make way for a limp rampage by the unleashed creatures, not uncommon for the climax of many movies certainly, but having your lead and all familiar supporting cast completely disappear and removed from the ensuing action is). Similarly, the movie sets up what we perceive to be key players only to have them vanish entirely or kill them off unceremoniously. Hilariously, nobody screams when they are devoured and torn to pieces by the Trogs!


I have let on that I enjoyed The Pit despite all my (deserved) criticisms yes?. Young Sammy Snyders is relatively impressive in the role of Jamie. Infusing the character with genuine pathos, he raises Jamie above the truly evil, soulless incarnations of killer kiddies we are usually saddled with. For instance, there is a particularly moving scene wherein Jamie cannot bring himself to feed a living cow to the hungry Trogs. As he walks the animal to it's uncertain fate, he talks to it apologetically, trying to reassure the thing that it's for the "better good" of his friends. Try as he might though, Jamie cannot bring himself to destroy the creature, reasoning that the cow did nothing wrong to him, after all. It's touching and disarming and one of the moments (out of many) where you sit up and think "Huh, as technically awful as this movie is, it really does have some nice things going for it." Jeannie Elias makes for a very likable heroine in Sandy (me thinks I may had a minor crush on her when we were initially watching the film, I totally understand where Jamie was coming from ). Smart, beautiful, confident, sympathetic and capable (save for one unfortunate little slip in the third act) Elias' Sandy embodies the best of that era's scream queens. Unfortunately, Elias relatively disappeared from screens shortly after the release of The Pit. Well, her face did anyway as she has had a rather prolific career in providing voice talent to hundreds of animated ventures and video games. Shame, I could have gotten use to seeing this impressive lass more often.

I suppose films like The Pit embody the very definition of enjoyably bad cinema.Whereas to me, usually bad cinema is just that, bad cinema, I'll admit that on occasion, I can find the fun in schlocky, b-grade horror movie shenanigans. Hell, as I mentioned not a moment ago, the night before our screening of The Pit, I was attempting to re-watch Prom Night 3 for crying out loud, which certainly is nothing but an awful movie. So, it was with this film that I tucked away my usually overly critical quintessence in the name of both having a genuinely good time with two friends and not spoiling Arthur's Christmas gift while I was at it. In the case of The Pit, I couldn't be more glad that I did. It's a wildly uneven effort no doubt about it and if the same film was released today, I'd certainly (as would many others) tear it to shreds. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even bothered to watch it in the first place. However, I can't help but bestow The Pit with that forgiving, loving embrace afforded to (and reserved for) films of yesteryear that though miss the mark by half a mile, they charm your pants off with their seemingly good intentions, the transparency that there were people involved in its making with at least a modicum of talent, some capable acting from the cast, nostalgic drive-in atmosphere that can only be found in productions dating from such a period, the semblance of intelligence somewhere and lastly, that there exists within the film, some genuine chills here and there. However flawed it is, The Pit is flat out fun if you go with it's kooky premise.

Curiously, the thing that I walked away thinking the most about after The Pit concluded, was my own misunderstood, admittedly morbid childhood. Or more to the point, the little Jamie Benjamin that I had in me (and as I glanced over at Arthur and James, the little Jamie Benjamin I presume they had in them as children as well). From my own tortured (not to mention terrifying), grappling of my sexuality during puberty (as frowned upon as Jamie's discovery of his), to my feverish, macabre imagination. From my cathartic revenge fantasies perpetrated against every bully who called me "fag" and every nay-saying adult who saw me as a problem child, to my never ending preoccupation with all those things that creep through fog enshrouded cemeteries or slither and squirm in the darkness of basements or scratch at your window in the dead of night, I epitomized Jamie Benjamin. As I imagine many of you dear readers, did too. There came a time in my early teens when a little light switch got flicked in my mind as I sat in my bedroom alone, surrounded by (now free of my parents aforementioned restraints) gory film posters, monster action figures and the beginnings of what is now a sizable horror film library. Glancing about at my collection, I wondered to myself perhaps for the first time "Just why am I so engrossed in all this scary, dark, horror business?" and the answer came to me almost immediately, (or, the switch was flicked). It wasn't anything profound, or nothing somebody else hadn't concluded before me, but it gave me pause nonetheless. Sizing up my life to that point, I realized for nearly my entire existence, I had always been surrounded by monsters. Only these ones, unlike the ones I had fallen in love with, were sanctioned by society. Bullies, hateful religious leaders, negligent parents, alienating teachers. It seemed at that moment, only sensible that I would then keep lifelong, close company with such "unsavory" things. The cathartic reflection was obvious. However, my monsters disappeared when I turned off the TV where they were safely kept at bay. My monsters allowed me to experience, confront, and conquer the horrors of the world free from the actual painful lessons I was learning about people on a daily basis. My monsters never even hurt a single soul, not really. Reassured, I'm certain that I smiled quietly to myself, I know that I did. Because as Clive Barker once said, "We could all use a friend in the dark." It's a sentiment that I couldn't agree with more, and I imagine little Jamie Benjamin would too.




Skull Ratings:
5 Skulls - The Best
4 Skulls - Very Good
3 Skulls - Good / Average
2 Skulls - Poor
1 Skull - The Worst