Subtitle this one “Jim and Artie Escape from Devil’s Island.” While you are subtitling the episode, go ahead and whoop it up, because that is the most fun you are going to have with it. Jim sneaks his way into a French prison ship by taking the place of a journalist who has been sentenced to Devil’s Island for critiquing the human rights violations of the place lovely twist of irony, that. Jim’s plan is to spring an undercover Secret Service agent who activities in France landed him on Devil’s Island, too.
Mix prison cliche with Wild Wild West cliché, stir liberally, and you have “The Night of the Bottomless Pit.” There is a chain gang, twenty lashes with a whip, a solitary confinement pit, and an elaborate death rap involving hordes of fire ants. Combine that with Artie in disguise rescuing Jim, a henchman with a killer gimmick (an iron foot, in this case) , and a pretty girl who helps our heroes escape. You know the drill.
Oddly enough, what bothers me about the episode is the implausibility of it all. It is strange after episodes dealing with growth formulas, reanimating the dead, and psychic mediums, the fact Jim does not fake a French accent and no one knows the difference is too much for me to take. It is doubly worse, because Artie did fake oe as he applied for a job as a prison guard.
About the only really amusing part was trying to figure out if the lagoon from Gilliga’s Island was doubling as the location our heroes stashed their escape boat. I am quite confident it was, but I have not foud any confirmation via the web.
“The Night of the Bottomless Pit” is mediocre. It has some amusing bits, but othing you have not seen before.
Rating: ** (out of 5)
UPATE: Cofirmation that was the lagoon from Gilligan's Island. Too bad Dawn Wells did nor show up, too, no?
