The Pit (1981) - So glad I found this

Just when I thought I'd watched every last horror offering the seventies and eighties have to offer, I find an absolute gem like 1981's 'The Pit' and I realise how many low-budget classics I must have missed.  I had no idea what I was in for when I sat down to watch this, only that it was 'horror.' It certainly is - of a type.

It's about a troubled young twelve-year-old boy who, when he isn't talking to his bedraggled teddy bear (imaginatively named 'Teddy'), he's either watching fully-grown women getting undressed through their bedroom windows or visiting some local monsters who live down the titular 'pit.'

You could almost say there's too much going on here.  You could have a boy who talks to a killer toy as the premise for the film.  Or you can have a young peeping tom working his way through the town's female population.  Or you can just have something monster-related. 'The Pit' goes for broke and weaves all three together.

If someone had told me that those three themes would all be included, I'd be afraid that the end product would be a bit of a mess.  Not here.  For some reason, it actually works.  Perhaps it's due to the performance of the young man at the centre of it all.  There's no doubt he's hardly someone we should look up to, but he's played with just enough sympathy for us to follow his journey.  

There are other characters in the film, such as the boy's live-in babysitter who he's madly in love with (you know this will hardly turn out well!) and other people sort of come and go through the movie and you won't really notice them missing until they turn up at the bottom of the pit.

There's not much in the way of gore and the monster effects are so-so, but probably quite good for a low-budget movie.  It's the central performance which carries it all and elevates this over so many forgettable similar films.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one