“Mankind is made up of inferior creatures - spiritually and physically deformed - who would’ve corrupted the harmony - of my perfect body.” - “The Crimson Executioner.”
I welcome you to the bizarre world of 1965’s BLOODY PIT OF HORROR, or as known in Italy, IL BOIA SCARLATTO. In the 60’s and 70’s Italy had a big run of horror films. Some of them are true horror classics, like several of the Mario Bava directed films. There is also a fair bit of cheese that came from this Italian horror cycle. The subject of this review falls into the latter category, but what entertaining and jaw dropping cheese this is. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys camp and kitsch, if you’re the kind of person who gets together with friends, has wings and a few beers and likes to laugh at “so bad they’re good” entertaining movies, then my friend, BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is the movie for you. If this is not your kind of thing, then stay away. To the rest of you, let’s discuss this campy exploitation classic.
We’ll start with the story. The film begins centuries ago with The Crimson Executioner meeting his doom in an iron maiden. As he’s being put in the device, he is ranting and raving to his killers how he will seek revenge. The Crimson Executioner is a sadistic murderer muscle man who tortured victims with all sorts of ingenious devices and is also obsessed with his body.
Flashing to modern times (the sixties), we see a bunch of attractive sixties Euro babe models with some guys who are in front of the castle of The Crimson Executioner. They want to use the castle for a gothic photo shoot session. After no one answers the door, they sneak inside the castle only to run into the security guards of the owner. The owner, played by Mickey Hargitay, is a recluse who wants them to leave until he discovers the make up girl is his former fiancée. In a moment of weakness, he allows them to stay and do their photo shoot under the condition they avoid the dungeon. So what do they do? Go in the dungeon. In the dungeon photo sessions happen, characters sneak away to make love and horseplay ensues. During the latter, an accident happens where the seal of the iron maiden the Crimson Executioner was killed, with his body still intact, gets broken. This infuriated the owner of the castle, and due to the broken seal, the spirit of The Crimson Executioner takes over his body and he then wants revenge. The fun starts.
While there is a lot of standout moments in this film, Mickey Hargitay as The Crimson Executioner is the highlight. Not really an actor when he made this film, he started out as a beefcake muscle man in Mae West’s stage show and eventually became the husband of Jayne Mansfield. He would go on to be an influence for Arnold Schwarzenegger but here, the performance and characterization is jaw dropping in how campy it all is. Read the line I posted above, my favorite in film history, and notice the way I have it phrased. That will give you the idea of the cadence he delivers his lines. He goes on about his body, his purity and he how he must cleanse others. When he is in the torture chamber with all his victims, he goes from victim to victim with the excitement of a five year old in a toy store who has been handed a million dollar check. His body language is hysterical, the lines and the deliveries of them are hysterical and his look is hysterical. He’s a muscle man wearing long red tights, no shirt, a long gold chain medallion, a Lone Ranger black mask around the eyes and a red hood. Utterly ridiculous, I love it.
Then there are the tortures themselves. One model spread eagle on a torture rack, another gets tied up and has icy water and then black tar poured on her back. The most exploitative is two models tied up on some device that spins around as The Crimson Executioner pushes knives in a device closer to their spinning bodies. One knife takes off the lace of one part of the bra of a model and the lace remains on the knife as the knife scars their bloody chests. Yikes - but no full nudity. They come as close as they can for a 1965 film, but still, this is a 1965 film. One point I want to make is while what I just described is horrible, it is done in such an over the top manner it’s funny. This movie has similar themes of narcissism, sadism and false moral superiority as WITCHFINDER GENERAL. Here, the execution of it is so unbelievable and over the top it provokes laughter. In WITCHFINDER GENERAL, it is done dead serious and you feel the for the victims and want to see the bad guys get their just deserts. Horror films really do have a thin line between disgust and humor and which one is portrayed really depends on the execution. BLOODY PIT OF HORROR and WITCHFINDER GENERAL are the two extreme ends of this spectrum.
Back to the humor, the death scene of The Crimson Executioner is a riot. There is this mannequin hanging from the wall with a couple of spikes protruding out of the chest known as “The Lover of Death.” Our comic villain is fighting the good guy and dives towards him. The good guy moves out of the way and The Crimson Executioner just happens, in a one in a million chance, to hug the mannequin right where the spikes are and gets impaled. Fortunately, he lives another minute or two as this gives him the chance to have a hysterical dramatic death scene, overacted and with enough lines praising his body to tickle the funny bone. My words don’t do this justice, just watch the scene and I guarantee a “you’ve got to be kidding me” reaction will greet you. After all this carnage, the two survivors remain calm and philosophical - hilariously inappropriate. Again, compare to the scream at the end of WITCHFINDER GENERAL, very appropriate.
What else is great about this movie? In all seriousness, the castle and dungeon do look pretty cool. The soundtrack goes back and forth between an Adam West Batman episode, a Scooby Doo episode and a 70’s porno film. Speaking of Batman, we also get fight scenes that are begging for “wham” and “pow” quotes above the punches - the security guys The Crimson Executioner has even look like they belong to The Joker. The model get killed on the spider web is classic. The spider looks like it is made of paper mache and after she gets killed, the hero just picks the spider up and throws it away like it’s nothing. The device with wires and arrows in front of the wires is ingenious and it’s funny how the make up girl, from several feet away, can tell a button from the hero’s shirt is going to set one of the wires off. Great death scene of a corpse in a car with an arrow through his neck with a string attached to it, riding around the castle repeatedly. I still can’t wrap my head around the logistics of that one! The models tend to be ditzy as well, especially the blonde, whose death involves walking right in front of the line of fire of an arrow like an idiot. Great line about the models saying to their boss (who kind of resembles Emil Sitka), that their lives are more valuable than doubling their salary. When he tripled their salary, their lives all of the sudden don’t matter. When the blonde model states she is more than a dumb blonde, the comeback line is, “Who says you’re a blonde?” Obviously a movie and characters not meant to be taken seriously.
So all of you lecherous sinners with your imperfect bodies, gather ‘round and watch BLOODY PIT OF HORROR, an exploitation classic that has given us The Crimson Executioner. I’ve watched this movie more times than I can count over the past couple of decades and if he ever reads this, a big thanks to old poster Sickdrjoe for introducing this one to me. Hopefully I can introduce you guys to this and somebody gets the same entertainment value as I do.
