Bloody Pit Of Horror

The Pit And
The Pendulous

Bloody Pit Of Horror
aka Il boia scarlatto
Italy 1965 Directed by Massimo Pupillo
Severin Films US Blu Ray

Warning: Bloody pit of spoilers below.

You know, I’ve been hearing about Bloody Pit Of Horror (which was rejected for a UK cinema release back in 1967) for a number of decades now. I’d not seen it and kinda wanted to because of its somewhat vague reputation and, since Severin just brought out* a restoration of this thing on Blu Ray, I figured now was the time.

Of course, the Italian title, which translates as The Scarlet Executioner, makes more sense than the English language title because the film deals with the legend of a 17th Century psychopathic, vigilante torturer known as, in the English dub, The Crimson Executioner. No real pit to be seen in this movie, it would seem. Of course, I knew of the central antagonist from his appearance 24 years ago**, when I read the first edition release of Kim Newman’s third Anno Dracula novel, Dracula-Cha-Cha-Cha (not sure if it’s still called that because, even then I remember the novel had a couple of titles). The film was not known to me at the time though and it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I was able to put two and two together.

The film certainly lives up to some kind of reputation, that’s for sure. It starts off in the year 1648 on the 5th of December (not sure if that makes this a Christmas movie or not) when the villanous Crimson Executioner is put to death in an iron maiden, threatening his captors with a curse in pretty much a retread of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (reviewed here), except the iron maiden in question looks like it’s been made of ply wood, badly painted and, well, the nine or so spikes that they could manage (in a central section which obviously pulls out so it can be used in a similar prop later in the movie)... look pretty rubbery, it seemed to me. And, yeah, the cabinet he’s killed and then sealed within looks like it might collapse just from the weight of him inside it, it has to be said.

Cue credits and dreamy music which, alas, has only ever been released on a vinyl 45rpm single, back in the day (and if you don’t know what rpm means, ask someone who’s a lot older than you). It’s typical Italian brass, bongos and voice with, in the later sinister scenes, the occasional touch of what sounds like a Hammond organ in places. Anyway, we cut to the present day... well, 1965... and a whole bunch of magazine staff have arrived with a group of models to shoot stuff in the castle. They break in because they find it’s empty and, when the owner, aided by his sinister, stripy shirted henchmen, finds out about this... he tells them to leave, before he spots an ex-girlfriend among the group and changes his mind. The kind of material they are shooting is dubious. It looks like they are shooting horror themed book covers, which would make sense because the lead protagonist Rick (played by Walter Brandi) is a horror writer... except the publisher mentions the shots are for a magazine and one of the male models is clearly wearing a Killing or Kilink outfit (which he name checks as a Skeletrix suit), which implies to me that they may be shooting shots for one of those horror photonovel/fotonovel magazines popular in places like Italy, Germany and Istanbul at the time.

We are then subjected to comical scenes of the flimsy photographer setting up shots and then taking snaps which freeze on the screen and shrink and twist slightly within it so we can see the final shot on a coloured background. The problem with this little montage is that the slapstick humour used really isn’t very funny at all and the overly comical, clownish music which accompanies these scenes is actually quite irritating (I still wish someone would release this score on CD though). And then, of course, one of the models has an ‘accident’ in the torture dungeon, just after another character accidentally knocks the seal off the Crimson Executioner’s iron maiden of a coffin. And that’s a bit of a red herring, it turns out because, although the various staff start being picked off one by one by... The Crimson Executioner... it’s really the current owner of the castle doing the torturing and killings.

Recognising his ex, Edith (played by Luisa Baratto) sends him over the top. But he’s already over the top if you ask me. He’s played by strongman Mickey Hargitay, who was married to Jayne Mansfield at the time this movie was made. He is so obsessed with his perfect, strongman’s body, that he left Edith in case her love tainted the purity of his sculpted muscles and, now that the intruders have disturbed his daily contemplation of his own muscles, he must become The Crimson Executioner and torture them all to death in various contraptions. Most of which aren’t all that creative although, it has to be said, the spider web deathtrap has to be seen to be believed.

How do we know what’s going on in his mind? Well he tells his whole plan to Edith, as he oils his chest for an interminably long time, reflected ad infinitum by two strategically placed mirrors multiplying the squelchy rubbing of his physique as he soliloquizes his insane and, frankly very campy rationale.

And, yeah, the film carries on in this vein until all the bad guys and most of the good guys are dead... leaving Rick and the heavily tortured Edith as the only ones to survive the ordeal... such as it is. It’s totally silly and the only real entertainment value, apart from the skimpy costumes of the female models of course, is Hargitay’s amazingly histrionic performance, as he leaps around like Spider-Man, arms akimbo, telling people he is torturing them to death because he is... The... Crimson... Executioner. Honestly, it’s like watching and listening to an insane version of William Shatner dialled up to eleven.

So yeah, of course I loved it.

The film does have some other things going for it in terms of cinematography. In one shot the model on the floor on the left of the screen is separated from her photographer and Edith by the central vertical pole of the lighting rig, splitting the screen like its two comic book frames. Another interesting thing is the slow, ponderous, moving camera which almost feels like it’s roaming around looking for the focus of the shot... a technique used quite often these days in a lot of TV shows (the modern Battlestar Galactica used it a lot, for instance) but here, instead of the handheld aesthetics we see now, the shots are very steady and deliberate in terms of their exploration of the scenes in question.

And, yeah, the small groups of people sharing shots are also quite nicely composed and it’s clear that the cinematographer and director knew what they were doing here. However, it’s the central, bizarrely over-the-top performance by Mickey Hargitay that really makes this film a truly silly but, classic slice of mid-sixties goodness. The lighthearted tone of the movie too, coupled with the various tortures and deaths going on, seem somewhat gloriously mismatched but, that too adds to the whole charm of the thing, I reckon.

So, if you like watching movies which are not exactly high art (in a way, the visuals are) but are certainly energetic and a joy to watch then you might find, contrary to what you might expect, that Bloody Pit Of Horror is right up your street. This is one of those films which would be perfect as something hilarious to show in an allnighter screening for friends, for example. And I’m sure there are a few drinking games you could play with this one... such as every time Mickey Hargitay mention’s he’s The Crimson Executioner you take a swig, for example. And lets not mention the fake bats.

*Nearer to the time I wrote this, rather than when I published the review.
** Again, at time of writing.