The “Bloody” Short Stacks continue, flapjacks! Unlike Delores, I’ll always make sure to satiate your appetite by serving up delicious horror reviews. Seriously, I haven’t seen that hag since I sat down at my usual, barely standing, table. But you didn’t come here to listen to me gripe about the help, so on to the review. This time I’m taking a bite out of 1965’s Bloody Pit of Horror, aka The Crimson Executioner. The film “claims” to be directed by “Max Hunter.” I wonder if he’s like Max Power and we should be prepared to strap ourselves in and feel the G’s?
We follow a group of models and photographers who are looking for a spooky castle for a horror themed photoshoot. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, no one answers at the castle they are scouting, so the producer sends the male model Perry to scale the castle, climb through a window and unlock the door so they can enter. Wait, Perry? While that does sound like something sneaky and shady Scary Perry would do, there’s no way he’s climbing a castle wall, not with that moustache!
Once inside, they run into one of the servants of the owner, who doesn’t want them there, but changes his mind after he sees one of the models and allows them to stay the night and finish their photoshoot. The entire shoot is pretty funny with women in perilous poses and revealing outfits being attacked by the male models in hokey costumes, including Perry donning a skeleton outfit. Yeah, this Perry isn’t very scary.
That outfit isn't very scary, Perry.
However, Perry is “accidentally” killed when he is strapped into a torture device, but it turns out it’s still fully operational and slices into him. Man, if only I could strap Scary Perry into a torture device. It turns out that the castle once belonged to The Crimson Executioner, a sadistic man who tortured people to death in his dungeon. Well, the current owner has embraced this philosophy and donned the persona and outfit of the Executioner and slowly picks off the models and crew one by one. Some of these characters are pretty dumb though as they just stand there and wait to die. During the climax, one of the women even runs in front of the new Crimson Executioner as he aims a crossbow at another and is shot instead.
This is what horror villains looked like before they started wearing Willam Shatner masks.
The Executioner’s weapons of choice are overly elaborate but interesting torture devices, including one where a fake spider tipped with poison slowly descends from the ceiling with the intent of piercing a woman’s neck, while she is trapped behind a “spider’s web” of trip wires hooked up to crossbows that when triggered will shoot the woman and kill her if anyone tries to rescue her. Look, this is what they had to work with since laser grid security systems weren’t invented yet, and it is pretty clever.
Jigsaw could learn a thing or two about elaborate traps from this guy!
It’s eventually revealed that the Executioner and the model he noticed earlier were once engaged, and he has saved her for last, placing here in one of those bronze ox traps. Can her new love interest escape his own death trap, a bed with spikes slowly lowering toward him, in time to rescue her and put an end to the new Crimson Executioner’s reign of terror?
Bloody Pit of Horror is a silly, fun, campy B movie with a plot and style similar to the other films of this era. Even the jazzy score is typical of this era of Italian horror, but it does have some eerie theremin sounding music that adds to the gothic castle atmosphere. The effects and gore are light, but that’s not unusual for a 60s horror movie. While too slow at times, there are plenty of enjoyable comedic bits and suspenseful torture scenes that I enjoyed. Bloody Pit of Horror is nothing spectacular and might not be for everyone, but as the movie’s ending title card said, it was “Fine.” If you like old school, cheesy, overacted B movies, I recommend checking this one out.
Now if only the service in this diner were “fine.” I wish I could don the mask of the Crimson Executioner and throw that horrible Delores inside an iron maiden, with Scary Perry! That would show her! Eh, there I go complaining about the staff again. I guess that’s my que to exit, flapjacks.
Overall Rating: 3 Pancakes
