The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

The Pit and the Pendulum (USA, 1961) 85 min color DIR-PROD: Roger Corman. SCR: Richard Matheson, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. MUSIC: Les Baxter. DOP: Floyd Crosby. CAST: Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, Luana Anders, Antony Carbone. (American International Pictures)

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Following the success of House of Usher, Corman soon delivered The Pit and the Pendulum, upping the ante with impressive results that surpassed the achievements of Usher. From the somber tone of the opening scenes to the shocking final moments of the picture, Pit is a sustained mood piece that builds in suspense and intensity as it progresses, a delightfully sinister gothic horror scenario that is given substance by screenwriter Richard Matheson’s clever script. While Corman would explore a variety of different approaches in subsequent Poe films, Pit is presented as a fairly straight-ahead narrative, unfolding within a distinctly nightmarish world. Marketed with the tagline “The Greatest Terror Tale Ever Told!”, Pit is simply good chilling fun!

As in Usher, Vincent Price portrays a character, here Nicholas Medina, who is living in an environment, which is psychologically oppressive, and is pushing him to the edge of sanity. The intrusion of interfering outsiders into this unbalanced situation precipitates further turmoil that leads to severe consequences. Medina resides in a dark, gloomy Spanish castle, located at the top of a cliff overlooking a turbulent sea, waves relentlessly crashing on a desolate rocky shoreline. The castle is an ever-looming physical presence, housing terrible secrets that torment Medina. Medina’s wife Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) has recently died under mysterious circumstances, and is interred in a tomb within the lower depths of the castle. Her suspicious brother, Francis Barnard (John Kerr), arrives from England to investigate her death, and is soon confronting Medina and his close friend, Dr. Charles Leon (Anthony Carbone) with accusations of foul play, creating tension and unease in the already foreboding surroundings. It is revealed that Nicholas is the son Sebastian Medina, an infamous Spanish Inquisitor, and that the father’s many horrific torture devices remain hidden in a chamber deep inside the castle. Barnard is told that his sister apparently died of heart failure due to shock, although Medina fears that she may have been mistakenly buried alive.

The inhabitants of the castle begin to experience strange, supernatural occurences, and Medina believes that Elizabeth’s spirit has returned to exact vengeance, although Dr. Leon suspects that someone is conspiring to drive Medina insane. In a final attempt to ascertain Elizabeth’s fate, Barnard, Medina, and Leon decide to exhume her body. Upon opening her tomb, they discover a corpse twisted in agony, with an expression of sheer horror frozen on its withered face. Medina flees, overwhelmed by guilt and grief, and must be prevented from taking his own life. As night falls, Medina hears Elizabeth’s ghostly voice calling him from below; despite his fear, he is drawn back to the tomb, and suddenly his dead wife rises out of her coffin. The apparition pursues a delirious Medina through the dark passages of the castle, and he collapses down a flight of stairs, just as Dr. Leon appears. A few scandalous plot twists later, a demented Medina has adopted the persona of his murderous dead father, Sebastian, and sets out to inflict punishment on those around him. After Dr. Leon is lured to his death in a shadowy pit, Medina, now dressed in his father’s ghoulish executioner’s garb, subdues Barnard, and straps him to a platform beneath a massive, looming pendulum. Medina starts the razor-sharp pendulum in motion, and as it swings ever lower towards Barnard’s vulnerable chest, the audience is treated to one of the most suspenseful and memorable sequences in the history of the horror film.

Corman’s confident hand in directing Pit, combined with the standout offerings of his collaborators, produced a gloriously macabre psychological thriller that is among the best of his Poe cycle. Matheson lifted the premise for the spectacular climax from the Poe short story of the same name, but fleshed out his own effective “haunted castle” story around it, achieving more compelling results than he had in the overly talky Usher. D.O.P. Floyd Crosby, whom Corman has credited as “the best I’ve worked with”, adeptly lensed the film, and along with art director Daniel Haller, created and captured an ominous environment throughout. Les Baxter’s somewhat avant-garde musical score, dominated by jarring percussion and melancholy strings, suitably accentuated the mood of the film. Of course, Corman wasn’t beyond using well-worn horror movie clichés – thunder and lightning crash outside the castle at critical moments, cobwebs drape dimly-lit corridors and hidden passageways, rats scurry underfoot – but he did incorporate a distinctive expressionistic approach to several scenes in the film, most potently in the frenetic montage of the climax, underscoring the psychological aspects of the drama. Corman would forge ahead with six more variations on the Poe formula, but this early entry in the cycle stands as one of the best, a perennial favourite and a classic of the genre.

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Originally published in The Roger Corman Scrapbook.