Film Year: 1965
Genre: Horror
Director: Domenico Massimo Pupillo
Starring: Mickey Hargitay, Walter Bigari, Luisa Barrato, Ralph Zucker
Featured Short: "The Talking Car"
The Short
In this deleted sequence from the Pixar film Cars, a little boy named Jimmy forgets the rules of the road and runs into oncoming traffic. Three talking cars take Jimmy into car purgatory where they judge him and decide his fate.
This traffic safety short is a bit humdrum. It lectures children, but tries to be fun by having said lecture be bellowed out by cars with animated mouths. Once the thrill of the pre-Roger Rabbit combination of live action and animation is gone, basically what you're left with is a droll drone telling us to look both ways before crossing the street for fifteen minutes.
Sometimes "Making learning fun" forgets the "fun" part. Just because your short is called "The Talking Car" doesn't make it enjoyable. But I promise never to run out into traffic again, just don't show me this thing again.
The Movie
If you thought Saw was the movie that started the torture porn subgenre, check out this little Italian number from 1965. In this film a killer known as the Crimson Executioner is sentenced to death in the 17th century, and 300 years later a group of photographers, models, and an author break into his castle wishing to shoot sexy ladies being murdered...in photos that is. The reclusive homeowner reluctantly lets them stay the night, so they break into his dungeon because they obviously haven't trespassed enough. Soon the phony killings start becoming real as one by one each member of the group starts dying. Has the Crimson Executioner returned from the grave?
Bloody Pit of Horror was filmed long before the title of "torture porn" was devised, but I have to wonder if the person who coined it was familiar with this film. Films like Saw and Hostel depict torture indeed, but Bloody Pit of Horror sensualizes it in an almost disturbing way. It's not enough to see women be tortured, we have to see them being tortured in underwear and bikinis, with focus on the breast region, and we see their sweaty skin glistening as they moan in pain. The dub does this aspect no favors, as the moans in this version almost sound orgasmic.
Looking outside of it's somewhat misplaced eye for sex, the film is quite strange, with lengthy sequences that could easily be trimmed, such as montages of photography or repetitive fight or fleeing scenes. It's a drawn out movie, mostly because it isn't about anything in particular except seeing people get tortured because they exist. This also isn't the first bad movie in which I've seen a woman get killed by a plush spider, but it probably is the first where she gets killed by a plush spider that's actually supposed to be a plush spider in the movie.
Because of all of this there is a weird aura of hyper-reality to the film that almost makes it interesting and hard to not watch. It's godawful, but in a unique way that you have to give it credit for.
The Episode
Here we are with another offering from the guys at Incognito Cinema Warriors XP. So far I've found them initially disappointing but eventually enjoyable in the course of two episodes. I go into Bloody Pit of Horror hoping for more of what Lady Frankenstein offered and less Bride of the Gorilla.
Bloody Pit of Horror was riffed by Rifftrax in 2012, though this ICWXP riff precedes it by about four years. I have yet to see the Rifftrax version so it's not possible for me to compare at this time, but I have to say that once I get around to it I hope it's better. While the guys at this riffing project haven't quite reverted back to the lackluster delivery of their first outing, this episode mostly sees them being a bit overzealous again, giving enthusiastic riffs that just aren't that funny or misdelivered. Maybe it's just me, but it also feels as if the timing is sluggish at points as well, with riffs that feel like they would have worked better coming in two seconds earlier.
At times the guys shine. There is a fairly solid patch of riffing during a lengthy scene where photo shoots are being setup to polka music, which I have to give them an A+ for because they never leave it silent and the vast majority of jokes are above average. The climax has some decent howlers as well, mostly because by this time the film is actually delivering some actual content to work with. Riffs on the really bad dub for the film also tend to hit more often than miss, as the sync on this movie is genuinely atrocious.
We also get ICWXP's first riff of a short film, The Talking Car. Like Bloody Pit it too was also riffed by Rifftrax, who tackled it as an opener in their 2016 live MST3K Reunion show. While I'm going to have to refresh my memory on what they did with this short, I remember thinking it was quite strong. But is it better than the ICWXP version? Hard to say, because this one is pretty funny too. There are a lot of dark riffs contrasting the pleasant suburbia family life in this short, with riffs of matricide and the like while Rick, Topsy, and Cylon almost seem to be pushing for little Jimmy to run out into traffic at every turn.
One thing I definitely noticed about the riffs that ICWXP throws out is that sometimes they're targeting a "blink and you'll miss it image" that puzzles me for a moment, forcing me to rewind to see exactly just what they're riffing. There's a point where an odd looking flaw in the print of the short makes Rick duck and say "Ugh, what is this stuff!" and at another point he references a car colored like a cow to which he cries "COW-MAN AWAY!" After rewatching these moments I found myself "Oh I get it!" and having a bit of a laugh, but I find myself hesitating as to whether I'd consider it good riffing or not. It's sharp-eyed, no doubt due to watching these films over and over again for the scripts, but they're a bit too sharp to a point that it takes me out of the experience because it becomes overly precise. Precision is a great thing to work into your riff script, but riffing on slight less than a second instances that your eye isn't exactly drawn to makes something of a chaotic experience at times. But there are people who would disagree with me and say rewatching episodes and catching riffs you didn't get before is part of the fun. That I can't deny, though I think this situation is a bit different. But perhaps I'm just not as astute as ICWXP seems to want me to be, as there are points during the film in which they throw a riff out and even after closer inspection I'm still not entirely sure what they're getting at.
The host segments mostly revolve around the group getting a "pet" zombie head named Zed, who is an atypical articulate zombie. A lot of little moments in the host segments are devoted to Rick, Topsy, and Cylon mocking and torturing him for fun. Outside of that, the segments are pretty bad. The closing segment where the Crimson Executioner visits via a viewscreen is just godawful and excruciating. I also find myself not a fan of the Talking Car segment where the grumpy car haunts their dreams or the lengthy and one-note static electricity segment. The only one I find myself looking on rather fondly is the opener where the trio eats old doughnut holes and get sick, which is kinda funny in that simplistic way I think they're going for. Plus it has the line "I'll show you bowel obstruction!"
With a film, a short, and host segments, this episode of ICWXP runs damn near 130 minutes, longer than any episode of MST3K even WITH commercials. The guys making this are having a blast, though this feels a tad self-indulgent. I'm used to lengthy Rifftrax MP3s on movies that run past two hours, though in those cases they're at the mercy of the runtimes of what they're trying to sync up with. ICWXP has no excuse except they're independent and they can make it lengthy because they can. I personally found myself checking the timer at several points to see how much I have left. Perhaps I wouldn't have if the riffing were more consistent, but at least I got some good chuckles and a mostly solid short out of this lengthy outing.
Note: This was the last episode of the series for Rob Atwell, who played Dr. Blackwood and was the original voice of Topsy-Bot 5000. I'm not sure if there was ever a reason given for his departure, but I'm sorry to see him go. His voice could be nails on a chalkboard for Blackwood at times, but I thought the character itself had its moments. Topsy was also usually one of the funnier characters in the theater as well.
Bloody Pit of Horror was riffed by Rifftrax in 2012, though this ICWXP riff precedes it by about four years. I have yet to see the Rifftrax version so it's not possible for me to compare at this time, but I have to say that once I get around to it I hope it's better. While the guys at this riffing project haven't quite reverted back to the lackluster delivery of their first outing, this episode mostly sees them being a bit overzealous again, giving enthusiastic riffs that just aren't that funny or misdelivered. Maybe it's just me, but it also feels as if the timing is sluggish at points as well, with riffs that feel like they would have worked better coming in two seconds earlier.
At times the guys shine. There is a fairly solid patch of riffing during a lengthy scene where photo shoots are being setup to polka music, which I have to give them an A+ for because they never leave it silent and the vast majority of jokes are above average. The climax has some decent howlers as well, mostly because by this time the film is actually delivering some actual content to work with. Riffs on the really bad dub for the film also tend to hit more often than miss, as the sync on this movie is genuinely atrocious.
We also get ICWXP's first riff of a short film, The Talking Car. Like Bloody Pit it too was also riffed by Rifftrax, who tackled it as an opener in their 2016 live MST3K Reunion show. While I'm going to have to refresh my memory on what they did with this short, I remember thinking it was quite strong. But is it better than the ICWXP version? Hard to say, because this one is pretty funny too. There are a lot of dark riffs contrasting the pleasant suburbia family life in this short, with riffs of matricide and the like while Rick, Topsy, and Cylon almost seem to be pushing for little Jimmy to run out into traffic at every turn.
One thing I definitely noticed about the riffs that ICWXP throws out is that sometimes they're targeting a "blink and you'll miss it image" that puzzles me for a moment, forcing me to rewind to see exactly just what they're riffing. There's a point where an odd looking flaw in the print of the short makes Rick duck and say "Ugh, what is this stuff!" and at another point he references a car colored like a cow to which he cries "COW-MAN AWAY!" After rewatching these moments I found myself "Oh I get it!" and having a bit of a laugh, but I find myself hesitating as to whether I'd consider it good riffing or not. It's sharp-eyed, no doubt due to watching these films over and over again for the scripts, but they're a bit too sharp to a point that it takes me out of the experience because it becomes overly precise. Precision is a great thing to work into your riff script, but riffing on slight less than a second instances that your eye isn't exactly drawn to makes something of a chaotic experience at times. But there are people who would disagree with me and say rewatching episodes and catching riffs you didn't get before is part of the fun. That I can't deny, though I think this situation is a bit different. But perhaps I'm just not as astute as ICWXP seems to want me to be, as there are points during the film in which they throw a riff out and even after closer inspection I'm still not entirely sure what they're getting at.
The host segments mostly revolve around the group getting a "pet" zombie head named Zed, who is an atypical articulate zombie. A lot of little moments in the host segments are devoted to Rick, Topsy, and Cylon mocking and torturing him for fun. Outside of that, the segments are pretty bad. The closing segment where the Crimson Executioner visits via a viewscreen is just godawful and excruciating. I also find myself not a fan of the Talking Car segment where the grumpy car haunts their dreams or the lengthy and one-note static electricity segment. The only one I find myself looking on rather fondly is the opener where the trio eats old doughnut holes and get sick, which is kinda funny in that simplistic way I think they're going for. Plus it has the line "I'll show you bowel obstruction!"
With a film, a short, and host segments, this episode of ICWXP runs damn near 130 minutes, longer than any episode of MST3K even WITH commercials. The guys making this are having a blast, though this feels a tad self-indulgent. I'm used to lengthy Rifftrax MP3s on movies that run past two hours, though in those cases they're at the mercy of the runtimes of what they're trying to sync up with. ICWXP has no excuse except they're independent and they can make it lengthy because they can. I personally found myself checking the timer at several points to see how much I have left. Perhaps I wouldn't have if the riffing were more consistent, but at least I got some good chuckles and a mostly solid short out of this lengthy outing.
Note: This was the last episode of the series for Rob Atwell, who played Dr. Blackwood and was the original voice of Topsy-Bot 5000. I'm not sure if there was ever a reason given for his departure, but I'm sorry to see him go. His voice could be nails on a chalkboard for Blackwood at times, but I thought the character itself had its moments. Topsy was also usually one of the funnier characters in the theater as well.
Average
The DVD
Sold via icwxp.com Bloody Pit of Horror is offered both as a single and in the (incomplete) Season 1 Collection along with Lady Frankenstein and Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory. Video was fair, with host segments being filmed in widescreen but presented in full screen while the theater segments stayed in full screen presentation. The print of the movie is godawful though, and there are no special features.
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