Creature Catering: The Pit (1981)
I am quite certain, dear readers, that some portion of my testosterone-endowed readership can recall that distinct moment in a young man’s life when the opposite sex becomes a constant source of vexation. It is a presage of the many alterations to come. Soon a body that has been comfortably inhabited for over a decade becomes unfamiliar terrain and the sight of one’s own member engorged into a crude and confusing parody of flesh might send a young lad fleeing from the water closet, his throat already ragged from bloody fits of screaming.
Jamie’s tenuous grasp on the proper time and place to express one’s admiration
Jamie Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) has reached that all too familiar stage and he is having a rather difficult time interacting with his female peers. Many a cruel jape has been laid in his path and his social prospects are bleak at best. Jamie’s circle of associates has been reduced to a stuffed bear, a handful of live reptiles and a race of ancient, pit-dwelling carnivores. These wooly creatures probably have a name for themselves that they quite prefer but Jamie decides to call them “trollologs” and appoints himself the steward of their sustenance.
One of the many trials of male pubescence is leaving behind childish treasures to become the manly specimen promoted by conventional society. Jamie is most visibly mired in this crisis. While I hesitate to pronounce judgement on a troubled youth, I cannot avoid acknowledging that much of Jamie’s behavior towards women is positively cretinous. Sandy O'Reilly (Jeannie Elias), his live-in babysitter, is the most frequent victim of his unsolicited attention and after each new perverse adventure he trots off to report his deeds to a soft toy named Teddy, as strident a symbol of arrested development as one might find anywhere.
A member of Jamie’s limited social circle
Teddy, the shaggy little thing, serves as a bit of a visual bridge between the innocence Jamie is rapidly shedding and the furry denizens of the titular pit. As Jamie’s declarations of affection for Sandy become bolder, the monsters require more and more food. This unstable combination of hormonal madness and creature catering sends Jamie tumbling into an extensive streak of poor judgement. You may think me a doddering “coot” bemoaning the eroding morals of young people today but I simply cannot abide by meat thieving, attempted livestock appropriation or murder by shoving.
To call Jamie’s predicament in The Pit universally relatable would be to ignore the fact that some of his behavior, as I have previously mentioned, is not entirely the norm for little lads teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Young boys are not cherubs, to be sure, and perhaps a few of us have engaged in a socially daring sidelong glance or uttered a hasty compliment outside the presence of a chaperone. But few of us have faked child abduction in order to blackmail a grown woman into indecency or made a meal of our romantic rivals. While this has an alienating effect on the bulk of a narrative that could appeal quite strongly to a number of adolescents, The Pit saves itself in its last moments with a punchline that suggests, as many have said before, that girls develop faster than boys.
The Pit runs 96 minutes and is rated R.
