Bad Pit

Anybody in the mood for a good horror movie containing a good eroto-wrestling scene?  Yeah?  Well, sorry, I can't think of one.

However, I just watched, thanks to Netflix, a really awful horror movie containing a not-so-terribly-bad-but-heavy-on-montage eroto-wrestling scene.  The Pit and the Pendulum--yes! the David DeCoteau version, not the Roger Corman one with Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, Luana Anders, and John Kerr (just three years after South Pacific), but the one by the guy who directed all six (and counting) of the straight-to-DVD Brotherhood movies and my personal favorite, Speed Demon.

So, then, for those of you who know who David DeCoteau is, finish this sentence:  "If it's directed by David DeCoteau, you know it's gonna ___________________________."

I hear you.  The DeCoteau movies I've seen hover somewhere between a guilty pleasure and an underwater matrixectomy.  David DeCoteau is, let's just say, not the master of suspense.  His movies offer one thing and one thing only--and that one thing is, to be sure, a very powerful inducement for some of us--and that thing is lots and lots and lots of fetching young man-flesh on almost constant dewy display.

This version of the Poe story drifts pretty far from its source, so far, in fact, that I'd have to say only the five-word title and the presence of a pendulum (but no pit, just a backyard really) owe anything to Poe.

It's also the softest core horror possible to actually get an R rating--ranking somewhere below It's Complicated for violence and gore--the IMDb "content advisory for parents" simply states, rather glumly, "Many people are choked."

I would add that it has a lot of ticking in it--as well as the kind of pounding heartbeats I associate with old Night Gallery episodes.  The ticking and thumping let us know that this is gonna be scaaaarrrry ... they are, in fact, the only aspects of this movie that let us know that.


But the next twelve words will be the reason why many of you, like me, will be irresistibly drawn to shoot this turkey to the top of your Netflix queue:  Under hypnosis, Tom Sandoval and Michael King speedo wrestle to the death.

My advice?  (1) Go immediately to the seventh chapter; (2) fast-forward through anything that does not feature Sandoval or King or both; (3) make up lots of stuff that you wish were in the scene but are not; (4) close your eyes and shut your ears, and (5) jerk off.