I really enjoy this quaint charming little oddity of a horror picture, it might be kinda corny and downright dumb in places, but it's also genuinely edgy and even a little daring at points too, and it has a great creepy child performance in young Sammy Snyders, who is very effective in his role and holds pretty much everything together himself as a disturbed and lonely young boy who discovers a way to rid himself of his enemies after finding a pit deep in the woods that's full of mysterious yellow eyed monstrous primeval beasts that are very hungry! The last time I watched this I really couldn't stop thinking about how much more effective a viewing experience it would have been if the plot had been retooled just a little so that it turned out that Jamie had been murdering people all along and dumping the bodies into the pit, and the "Trol-lol-logs" had just been figments of his warped imagination and a way of justifying himself. That was what the movie was screaming out to happen in my book, it would have clearly been so much deeper, darker and meaningful that way. If they'd have had the balls to go with the more psychological route I'm certain the movie would have gone down as more of a classic, not to say that it isn't a classic to those who love it, I like it a lot, I find it to be a lot if strange old school fun, but if it fails, it fails the hardest because of the horribly mishandled tone and plot structure. It feels like a movie of two halves, you have the dead serious stuff like the intensity of Snyders and his crazy eyes and his voyeuristic tendencies and obsession with *adult* naked women, and then you've got the goofy whimsical music playing while an old lady comically gets dumped down the pit, and then it really changes things up when the monsters briefly get free to go on a little rampage and feast on sunbathers! Anyway it's not exactly ideal but it is worth watching for Sammy Snyders. You do feel for his character at first when you see how the horrible neighbourhood kids treat him like dirt and the ignorant adults who should know better judge and dismiss him as "no good", but then as his more deviant behaviours come to the fore and he's essentially a murderer it makes it pretty hard to care too much when he eventually meets his own demise via a little classic grim poetic justice at the hands of another disturbed child... Kooky, creepy, and a little bit deranged, this cool little gem is well worth checking out if you've never seen it, it's a fun flick, never quite seen anything like it. X
Review of The Pit
