One day all of the citizenry of the super sleepy town of Midwich passed out dead in their tracks and took to an involuntary siesta. After awakening, all the women within child bearing years discovered a mysterious bun in their ovens. (The unmarried had some 'splaining to do). Falling asleep and waking up pregnant can be disheartening (just ask my cousin Ida), but the ladies of Midwich take their mass rape with typical English aplomb. When the children are born, it is clear that they are far from normal; in fact, they're blonde AND smart, a chillingly unnatural combination. As they get older, they begin to show further signs of otherworldliness, roaming the streets in flocks like junior Jehovah's witnesses. Residents begin to fear these Aryan-looking oddballs who begin to unabashedly strut their psychic and telekinetic powers all about town. This unrest and distrust is worsened when it's learned that if the creepy kids have a problem with you, they force you to drive your car into a wall or blow your brains out. In fact, it is suspected that Midwich is just a stepping-stone and what the kids really have their radiant eyes on is the whole globe. Are they from outer space? Can they be stopped? Based on a novel by the great JOHN WYNDHAM entitled THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS (on account of Cuckoo birds are such slackers that they make other birds raise their kids) and featuring excellent performances from future INNOCENTS star MARTIN STEPHENS and future suicide GEORGE SANDERS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is creepy, compelling and surprisingly thought provoking. In fact, it's impossible to think of any demonic child movie that doesn't have this 1960 sci-fi "What if?" flick's greasy paw prints all over it. Like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS before it, it's the absence of humanity and emotion, not to mention individuality (Commie!) that unnerves here. Although there's no over estimating the power of super-imposed, glowing eyeballs over a still framed black and white image of a cherubic child either.

• Plane flies over slumbering Midwich, pilot nods off and plane goes boom!
• Mom with psychic assistance, attempts to scald own hand after accidentally presenting infant with a too hot baby bottle
• A HELLRAISER like Chinese puzzle box reveal the kids communal learning skills
• SANDER's imagining of a brick wall to block off munchkin's Jedi mind tricks.
• Miniature house explodes into flames

Coming across more as a garden-variety suburban asshole with a blonde bowl cut than misunderstood boy plagued with autism, Jamie Benjamin (SAMMY SNYDERS) is a 12-year-old social pariah. His parents have a difficult time keeping babysitters, the kids at school would rather punch him in his squirrely face than be his friend, and the town librarian has him pegged for the preteen pervert that he actually is. This is not to say that Jamie is devoid of social interactions, he does have a stuffed bear named Teddy that talks back to him and he has a custodial relationship with a pack of hairy creatures (think CHA-KA from LAND OF THE LOST on a bender) he calls the Tra-la-logs that live in an isolated pit in the woods.

When his parents hightail it to Seattle to look for a new house, Jamie is left in the care of nubile babysitter/housekeeper Sandra O'Reilly (JEANNIE ELIAS) a raspy-voiced co-ed working on a degree in psychology. Rocking a face like ANNIE POTTS and a body like JOYCE DeWITT, Sandra quickly becomes the obsession du jour for the hormonal Jamie and he takes to watching her sleep, peeping on her in the shower and asking for her help with bathing. When Sandra rebuffs his advances, Jamie turns his attention back to the nutritional needs of the Tra-la-logs and experiments first with candy bars and then with raw meat from the butcher.

After Jamie gets busted for stealing money from Sandra to support the Tra-la-logs insatiable meat habit, he starts shoving his enemies into the pit. First to go is the librarian's ginger-haired niece, and then wheelchair-bound Mrs. Oliphant followed by Sandra's football-playing beau. Jamie emerges from the woods after each kill with a trophy from the victim, which at first looks like an earmark of a serial killer in the making. Turns out he's just stockpiling evidence to eventually frame one of Sandra's subsequent, and heavily mustachioed, suitors. Speaking of Sandra, she eventually slips into the pit and is torn to shreds before Jamie's eyes, and that is where Jamie should have gotten a clue. But no, Jamie decides to throw a rope into the pit to free the Tra-la-logs. They climb to the surface and go on a killing spree claiming stoner skinny dippers and a girl in super-short jogging shorts.

A pack of deputized vigilantes wielding shot guns hunt down the hirsute terrors, pump ‘em full of lead, and a back-ho is brought in to bury them and seal off the pit. The movie could have ended there, but thankfully THE PIT just keeps on going and delivers Jamie to his grandparents' house where he encounters an equally as creepy girl cousin. The two take off through a cornfield and into a wooded area that looks eerily similar to one where Jamie used to hang. So similar (read: low budget), that this neck of the woods also has a similarly shaped pit inhabited by (umm… honestly, who didn't see this coming?) Tra-la-logs. The strength of the absurd script rests squarely on the shoulders of the young SAMMY SNYDERS, and his utterly loathsome portrayal of Jamie will either have you laughing or applauding the final frame of the film.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

• Aided by a well-synced tape recording and a pay phone, Jamie manipulates the schoolmarmish librarian with the smoking-body to peel off her aerobics unitard so he may take some naughty Polaroids
• Jamie takes Mrs. Oliphant for a push
• The talking Teddy bear moves his head
• Sandra foolishly agrees to wash Jamie's back in the tub
• Sandra's over-the-top screams as she is pulled to bits by the Tra-la-logs
• The ending!

Earlier: TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Devon on The Pit

Show me a person who bagged out on their senior prom because of the early ‘80s slasher-flick PROM NIGHT, and I'll show you a person who agreed to a secret pact to cover up a murder they committed with their childhood pals. Our film commences in an abandoned monastery, though it looks more like a hospital, where grade school chums Wendy, Nick, Kelly, and Jude are playing a fairly innocuous game of hide-and-go-seek dubbed "The Killer is Coming." An uninvited Robin Hammond joins in on the action, and the foursome proceeds to back her out of a second story window. Rather than get help for the visibly breathing Robin, the four take an impromptu oath to conceal their involvement, and peddle home on their banana-seat bikes. A large, clucky window falls on Robin, so she doesn't survive, and her murder is erroneously blamed on some serial pedophile that gets sent up the river for the crime. Flash forward to present, and Alexander Hamilton High School is in the grips of prom season. Kim Hammond (JAMIE LEE CURTIS), older sister of the deceased Robin, has been elected prom queen, and Nick, one of her sister's killers, will be her prom king. To make matters more awkward, Nick just broke up with Wendy, another of one of the kiddie killers, and Wendy is not taking her dumping sitting down. Wendy enlists the help of high school truant Lou and his cronies to pull off some sort of CARRIE WHITE shenanigans when the king and queen are crowned. Thankfully, the pedophile who took the wrap for the murder, just so happened to coincidentally escape from a mental institution and was last seen driving towards Alexander Hamilton High in a powder-blue punch buggy. Oh, and all four of the childhood killers have been receiving breathy phone calls from a man asking them if they "still like to play games" and finding their yearbook book photos taped inside their lockers with shards of broken mirror. The big night finally arrives, and as JAMIE LEE struts her bestest disco moves in high school auditorium, the three girls involved in her sister's death are methodically slashed and dispatched. The second half of the films begs the viewer to figure out who could be behind these killings. Is it the pedophile seeking vengeance? Is it Kim's father and high school principal Raymond Hammond (a notably miscast LESLIE NEILSEN)? Is it Kim herself? (Editor's note: JAMIE LEE does sort of look like a dude from certain angles). I'll never tell, but to quote from the haunting disco anthem that permeates the school auditorium, "Prom Night… Everything's All Right!" INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

• The opening sequence with the kids tormenting and killing Robin is a must-see. The repeated intonations of, "The Killer is Coming… The Killer is Coming," is downright creepy
• Jude's death in the back of her date's super-awesome raper van
• The protracted chase scene of super-bitch Wendy by the mysterious killer
• The disco floor, complete with sunken lighting, in the Hamilton High auditorium
• JAMIE LEE's show-stopping dance routine, with obligatory close-up as her partner Nick twirls her like a pizza
• The decapitated head tumbling down the prom catwalk
• The prom's signature song: