[miketardis]

THE PIT (1981)
Directed by Lew Lehman. Stars Sammy Snyders, Jeannie Elias. This oddball Canadian movie, produced in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, has attracted a small cult following based around its unusual leading character. Jamie (Snyders, now a dance instructor) is a perverted 12-year-old boy whose only friend is his teddy bear, which he talks to (and which talks back to him). Not exactly friends, but certainly acquaintances, are the “tra-la-logs,” four hairy, midget-sized troglodytes with glowing orange eyes that live in a pit hidden deep in the woods near Jamie’s house. While Jamie’s parents are away and psychology student Sandy (Elias) is his live-in nanny, the boy provides food for the tra-la-logs by luring the town’s undesirables into the hole, including the bully who punched him in the face, a blind old lady who called him a hippie, and Sandy’s football-playing boyfriend, of whom Jamie is jealous. The boy spends the rest of his time trying to see women naked, whether he’s spying on Sandy in the shower or making fake ransom calls to the school librarian, demanding she unclothe before his living-room window if she wants to see her niece again.
Lehman hardly knows what he’s doing, opening the film with a reel out of order, and then forgetting about Jamie late in the game with a long sequence where the troglodytes escape the pit and wreak havoc around town. Some misplaced comic relief and a disregard for plot coherency leave viewers shaking their heads, yet oddly attracted to this freak show of a movie (which does offer an effective final shock). Lehman’s one-and-done as a director, THE PIT was released by New World.