The Pit/Hellgate
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cindy Auten, Edith Bedker, Jeannie Elias, John Auten, Richard AldenDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 187 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of The Pit/Hellgate
Movie Review: It's the pits!
Summary: 3 Stars
Why is this movie such a pile of crap? Because it had so much potential. Any fan of B horror movies would be intrigued by the premise: A boy with a crush on his babysitter leads people into a pit filled with flesh eating creatures under the direction of his talking teddy bear. What B movie fan wouldn't rush out to hunt this baby down? However, what we're given is such a boring and uneventful waste of time it's a total let down.
First we start with a clip of the movie that happens later on. What movie has this ever worked successfully in? It's like when a novel has a random page from later on in the book at the very beginning. What's the point? Why would I care what happens near the end when I don't even know who the characters are yet? So this movie is a lot like that, only worse because it's a movie and a bad one at that. It's not even different footage or camera angles, it's just the same exact footage tacked on at the beginning. It looks completely out of place because there's not any opening credits, or even a black screen with: S**t films Presents..." Nope, it just throws you into this thing completely unprepared.
Another faux pas of this egregiously bad film is that fact that instead of the murders taking place throughout the movie, they happen all at once in a time-frame of about ten minutes. There's no suspense, surprise, or ingenuity in any way. And because this happens near the end of the film, most of the movie is boring dialogue and by the time of the murders we don't even care anymore.
So without further ado I'll provide my usual synopsis of this film to prevent you from having to see it if you're only mildly interested. So let's start this piece of crap shall we?
Now as I said, it starts with part of the movie from later on. A birthday party to be exact. And within the first minute of this flash-forward we have a short flashback to make things even more confusing. The first thing you'll immediately notice is the bad acting. The one boy's voice sounds like he's doing an imitation of a cartoon dog. So to get to the point, Jamie, the anti-hero of this movie leads a boy and girl that pick on him into the pit where they are devoured. Of course we don't see them being devoured, just being pushed into the pit.
Finally we have the credit sequence which should have taken place 3 minutes ago. At least the movie has a cool theme song, but the only problem is it's the only song. I understand this movie is low budget, but even the no-budget movie Manos: the Hands of Fate had a full soundtrack! So now we're in detention, for whatever reason, where Jamie is being punished for something and it seems he cut out some naked chick from a library book. His teacher claims the librarian will "find a way to repair it." How the heck do you 'repair' a book with something cut out of it? And why does the library have nudie books in it anyway! Even if they are classified as "art?"
Jamie is completely unlikable and does nothing but play stupid pranks on people. Of course, Jamie seems to be hated by everyone, even before they know him! His mom talks to his new baby sitter and we have the same flashback from earlier on. We're only 7 min. into this and they've shown the same flashback twice.
After a longwinded discussion with the babysitter, Jamie's parents finally leave. Jamie immediately takes the opportunity to hit on his new caregiver. Good luck, Jamie, I've dealt with ice-princesses like her before. She's even some kind of feminist as she won't let Jamie help her out. Jamie confides in his Teddy Bear about all this. Teddy seems to think she's hot too so he encourages Jamie to go for it. Teddy gets the idea to peek on her while she's undressed in the bathroom. I could have used a Teddy of my own when I was his age.
After some peeping-Tom shenanigans, Jamie tells his babysitter about the things in the pit. He calls them Tra-la-logs. They're supposed to be Troglodytes I guess, or some other missing link in evolution mythology. So Jamie goes to visit the Tra-la-logs and he attempts to hold an actual conversation with them. He introduces himself to them as "The boy with the terrarium at home." Wow, isn't he special?
So yeah, that's the meat of this film. Jamie and the babysitter hanging around talking. They're pretty much the only two major characters in the whole movie. I guess you can count Teddy as number 3. Jamie also has a couple confrontations with the girl next door to help break the monotony.
We're deeply entrenched in Act 2 now and still nothing has happened. Jamie for some reason gets the idea to try and feed the Tra-la-logs. When candy doesn't work he tries meat which they really like. We don't really get to see the Tra-la-logs up close, but they kind of look like midgets underneath hair-covered carpets. So Jamie has to go around finding money to buy meat for the them and...why am I watching this? Seriously, I'm watching Jamie buying meat from a butcher shop now. This isn't entertaining! This is boring and uneventful! At least Teddy chimes in and makes things a little entertaining from time to time. Teddy's a frikkin stuffed bear and he's the best character in this film!
So Jamie does some more peeping-Tom hijinx and tricks the librarian into taking her top off while he takes a couple Polaroids. Teddy exclaims, "I'm going to look at these a lot." Man that is one deranged Teddy!
We finally reach the part of the film where Jamie begins to feed his neighbors to the Tra-la-logs. It's kinda strange though because there's like cartoon music that plays in the background. This part just speeds on by as Jamie kills them all off in rapid succession. Then we come to the part of the movie that started out this film fiasco, the part with the party and the boy and girl he tricks into falling into the pit. But what's the point of watching it? I mean, we've already seen it once.
That pretty much ends this movie. He kills a couple more people, and there's the obligatory ironic ending. Pretty standard stuff. To sum things up, this film is just one big let down. I felt like I was keeping down vomit the whole time while watching it. It has that icky 70s feel throughout it that really sets you off your food.
The crap icing on this piece of garbage DVD is that fact that they tack on another movie, He11gate, to make it seem like, "Oh, well this movie was crap, but maybe this second feature will be good." Then it turns out the extra movie is even worse than the first. At least the Pit had a cool premise, He11gate doesn't seem to have a premise at all. I couldn't even sit through the thing, so I kept it on in the back ground while I got some work done. I don't remember anything happening.
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