Felix Johnson and Aaron Scott (Mark Dacascos and Stoney Jackson) are the best martial artists in the world — Dacascos has been in The Crow: Stairway to Heaven TV series, plays the Chairman on Iron Chef America, is a 4th-degree black belt in Wun Hop Kuen Do and in so many action movies, while Jackson is an action movie actor, but was also a dancer in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” the lead singer of The Sorels in Streets of Fire and Wacky Dee in CB4 — and are content never proving who is better. Their wives — Andrea and Aubrey (Marjean Holden, Sheeva from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and Debbe Dunning, Heidi the Tool Time girl on Home Improvement series 3-8) — are competitive, and both want their respective men to be the star of a new movie, The Pulverizer. The fighting gets so bad that promoter Wink Barnum (Wayne Newton) signs them up to battle to the death on PPV. But do Felix and Aaron want to die to impress their wives by fighting in a Malaysian death match on a show called Kaos in the Kage?

“Deck the halls with parts of Charlie/Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! Make the yuletide gross and gnarly/Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-ha-ha! Oh, hello, creeps. It’s me, your favorite holiday spirit, doing a little Crypt-mas decorating. Boy, do I love this time of year. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your- Hey, Jack! Get away from me! YOW! I guess he’s off my Christmas chopping list. Which brings to mind tonight’s terror tale. It’s about two martial artists who do some chopping of their own, in a tasteless fright to the finish, I call: “The Pit.””

In the end, everyone gets what they want. The abusive wives get to beat each other into bloody, bruised messes, while the husbands get to turn the movie into a buddy cop adventure film, The Pulverizers. This is one episode where no one dies.

This episode was directed and written by Pittsburgh native John Harrison—read the interview with him here—who was Sir Pelinore in Knightriders, the first Assistant Director for Creepshow and Day of the Dead and the villain of Effects. He also made two ground-breaking Dune mini-series for SyFy.

This episode is based on “The Pit!” from Vault of Horror #40. It was written by Carl Wessler and drawn by Bernie Kristein. In that story, the husbands watch cocks and dogs fight, then finally, their wives tear one another apart.