The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film)
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| The Pit and the Pendulum | |
|---|---|
 Original 1961 theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Roger Corman |
| Produced by | Roger Corman; James H. Nicholson, Samuel Z. Arkoff (Exec Prods) |
| Written by | Richard Matheson |
| Starring | Vincent Price Barbara Steele John Kerr Luana Anders |
| Music by | Les Baxter |
| Cinematography | Floyd Crosby |
| Distributed by | American International Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1961 |
| Running time | 85 min |
| Language | English |
The Pit and the Pendulum (onscreen title: Pit and the Pendulum) is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. It was the second title in the successful series of Edgar Allan Poe-based movies released by American International Pictures, immediately following Corman’s House of Usher (1960). The screenplay, very loosely based on Poe’s short story, was by Richard Matheson, and the widescreen cinematography was by Floyd Crosby.
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[edit] Synopsis
16th Century Spain. Francis Bernard (Kerr) visits the castle of his brother-in-law Nicholas Medina (Price) in order to find out the cause of the mysterious death of his sister, Elizabeth (Steele). Both Nicholas and his younger sister, Catherine (Anders), offer a vague explanation about Elizabeth having died from a rare blood disorder. However, it is soon revealed that Elizabeth had become obsessed with the various torture devices located in the basement of the castle and one day locked herself into an iron maiden, having gone insane. Francis finds both explanations difficult to believe, and advises Nicholas that he will not leave until he finds out the true reason Elizabeth died.
Francis, having noted that Nicholas appears to be feeling guilty regarding Elizabeth’s death, is offered a lengthy explanation by Catherine. Their father was Sebastian Medina, a notorious member of the Spanish Inquisition. When Nicholas was a very small child, he was playing in the castle's torture chamber when his father entered the room with his mother, Isabella, and Sebastian’s brother, Bartolome. Hiding in a corner, Nicholas watched in horror as his father suddenly began hitting Bartolome with a red-hot poker, screaming “Adulterer!” at him. After murdering Bartolome, Sebastian then began torturing his wife slowly to death, directly in front of Nicholas’s eyes.
After telling Francis the story of Nicholas’s childhood trauma, Catherine and Francis are informed by family physician Dr. Leon that Isabella was in fact not tortured to death, rather she was entombed behind a brick wall while still alive. Dr. Leon explains, “The very thought of premature interment is enough to send your brother into convulsions of horror.” Nicholas believes that Elizabeth, who the doctor insists did die from a blood disease, may have been interred prematurely. The doctor further explains that Nicholas now believes Elizabeth’s vengeful ghost is haunting the castle. Elizabeth’s beloved harpsichord plays in the middle of the night, with her rings found in the keyboard. Francis accuses Nicholas of planting the evidence of Elizabeth’s “haunting” as some sort of elaborate hoax. Nicholas insists that his wife’s tomb be opened. They discover Elizabeth’s putrefied corpse frozen in a position of writhing horror, hands clawed and mouth wide open, as if in a final scream.
That night, Nicholas, now on the very edge of sanity, hears his wife calling him. He follows her ghostly voice down to the torture chamber. Suddenly, Elizabeth appears from out of the shadows, causing Nicholas to fall downstairs. Elizabeth is alive, and she is met by her lover, Dr. Leon. She taunts Nicholas’s apparent corpse about their scheme to drive him mad so the two lovers could inherit his fortune and estate. Nicholas opens his eyes and begins laughing while his wife and the doctor stare in horror. Nicholas overpowers Dr. Leon, who attempts to escape but falls to his death. Nicholas then approaches Elizabeth and promises he will torture her horribly. Francis enters the dungeon to see what has happened. Nicholas, who is now gibbering with insanity, confuses Francis for Leon and knocks him unconscious. He straps him to a stone slab located directly beneath a huge razor-sharp pendulum. The cackling Nicholas slowly lowers the pendulum/razor closer and closer to Francis’s torso. Catherine arrives just in time with a servant. Nicholas falls to his death and Francis is removed from the torture device. As they leave the basement, Catherine vows to seal up the chamber forever. They slam and lock the door shut, unaware that Elizabeth is still alive, gagged and trapped in the iron maiden.
[edit] Production
The box office success of Corman’s House of Usher took AIP’s James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff by surprise. Corman admitted, “We anticipated that the movie would do well, but not half as well as it did.” According to Richard Matheson, “When the first film was a hit, they still didn’t consider doing a Poe series. They just wanted another movie with a Poe title fixed to it.”[1] The Pit and the Pendulum was announced in August 1960 and filming began the first week of January, 1961. The shooting schedule was sixteen days and the film’s budget was almost $1 million, nearly three times the budget of House.[2]
Matheson's script freely devised an elaborate narrative that barely resembled Poe, with only the horrific finale having any similarity at all to the original short story on which the film was based. Corman noted, "The method we adopted on The Pit and the Pendulum was to use the Poe short story as the climax for a third act to the motion picture, because a two-page short story is not about to give you a ninety-minute motion picture. We then constructed the first two acts in what we hoped was a manner faithful to Poe, as his climax would run only a short time on the screen."[3]
Matheson's screenplay included a flashback to a time immediately preceding Elizabeth's illness, featuring Nicholas and Elizabeth horseback riding and eating a picnic lunch. Corman deleted the sequence because he felt it violated one of his major theories regarding the Poe series: "I had a lot of theories I was working with when I did the Poe films...One of my theories was that these stories were created out of the unconscious mind of Poe and the unconscious mind never really sees reality, so until The Tomb of Ligeia we never showed the real world...In Pit, John Kerr arrived in a carriage against an ocean background, which I felt was more representative of the unconscious. That horseback interlude was thrown out because I didn't want to have a scene with people out in broad daylight."[2]
The production went fairly smoothly without any major problems, and Corman found the shoot to be an enjoyable experience: "I enjoyed The Pit and the Pendulum because I actually got the chance to experiment a bit with the movement of the camera. There was a lot of moving camera work and interesting cutting in the climax of the film."[1] Corman's cinematographer, Floyd Crosby, shot the film using the 35 mm anamorphic film process with Panavision cameras and lenses.
Barbara Steele has said that she was “in awe” of Price during the production, and described the filming of their final scene together as surprisingly physical: “Our major confrontation where he strangles me was done in one take…He really went at me and I had the bruises on my throat to prove it. Afterward, he was so concerned he had hurt me – a perfect gentleman – a truly kind figure in spite of his image.”[4]
While watching the daily rushes of the movie, Corman became convinced that Steele’s “thick working-class English accent” was not blending well with the other cast members, so after the filming was completed he had all of her dialogue dubbed by a different actress.[2]
The film’s pressbook claimed that the pendulum utilized in the movie was eighteen feet long, with a realistic rubber cutting blade, and weighed over a ton, rigged from the top of the sound stage and suspended thirty-five feet in the air. The device was designed by the film’s art director, Daniel Haller.[5] In an interview, Haller provided details regarding the creation of the pendulum:
- "I found that such a pendulum actually was used during the Spanish and German inquisitions. At first we tried to use a rubberized blade and that's why it got stuck on Kerr's chest. We then switched to a sharp metalized blade covered with steel paint. The problem was to get it in exactly the right position so it would slash John's shirt without actually cutting him. To guard against this we put a steel band around his waist where the pendulum crosses. He was a good sport about it but noticed him perspiring a good bit and no wonder. That pendulum was carving out a 50 foot arc just above his body.”[6]
[edit] Response
Writer Ed Naha has noted that The Pit and the Pendulum was a bigger hit than House of Usher and even received a better critical response,[1] a rare achievement for a sequel. With few exceptions, the majority of the film’s reviews were extremely positive.
Howard Thompson of the The New York Times wrote, “Atmospherically at least—there is a striking fusion of rich colors, plush décor and eerie music—this is probably Hollywood’s most effective Poe-style horror flavoring to date…Richard Matheson’s ironic plot is compact and as logical as the choice of the small cast…Roger Corman has evoked a genuinely chilling mood of horror.”[1] Variety noted, “The last portion of the film builds with genuine excitement to a reverse-twist ending that might have pleased Poe himself.”[6] The Los Angeles Examiner said it was “…one of the best “scare” movies to come along in a long time…skillfully directed by Corman…with Vincent Price turning in the acting job of his career….”[6] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker felt it was "a thoroughly creepy sequence of horrors..."[2] Time called the film “a literary hair-raiser that is cleverly, if self-conciously, Edgar Allan poetic.”[1] The Hollywood Reporter described it as "...a class suspense-horror film of the calibre of the excellent ones done by Hammer...It is carefully made and has full production values...Vicent Price gives a characteristically rococo performance..."[2] Time Out opined, "Corman at his intoxicating best, drawing a seductive mesh of sexual motifs from Poe's story through a fine Richard Matheson script."[7]
But Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times was notably unimpressed by the film: “The uncredited [sic] scenario violates Poe’s gothic style with passages of flat, modernized dialogue…But the peccadilloes of the script pale beside the acting…Price mugs, rolls his eyes continuously and delivers his lines in such an unctuous tone that he comes near to burlesquing the role. His mad scenes are just ludicrous. The audience almost died laughing.” [2] Price was so infuriated by Stinson’s negative review that he wrote a letter to the critic, saying “I find I must break a 25 year determination never to answer a critic. Since your review of The Pit and the Pendulum was obviously not meant to be instructive, and therefore constructive, but only to hurt and humiliate, I’m sure you would enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that it did. My only consolation…is that it is the second greatest box office attraction in the country.” Price apparently never sent the letter, placing it instead into his “Letting Off Steam File”.[2]
In 1968, when the film was sold to ABC-TV for television airings, the network noted that the film was too short to fill the desired two-hour time slot. They requested that AIP pad the film out. Ten minutes of additional footage were subequently shot by Corman’s assistant Tamara Asseyev. Of the original cast members, only Luana Anders was available at the time, and the new sequence featured her character, Catherine Medina, confined to a lunatic asylum. After much screaming and hair pulling, Catherine reveals the details of her horrific story to her fellow inmates, at which point the film itself follows as a flashback.[2] This prologue has been made available as an extra on the MGM Midnite Movies DVD release of the film.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Naha, Ed. The Films of Roger Corman: Brilliance on a Budget, Arco Publishing, Inc., 1982. ISBN 0-668-05308-9
- ^ a b c d e f g h Williams, Lucy Chase. The Complete Films of Vincent Price, Citadel Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8065-1600-3
- ^ Di Franco, J. Philip (editor). The Movie World of Roger Corman, Chelsea House Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0-87754-122-1
- ^ Biordowski, Steve and Del Valle, David. Cinefantastique magazine, Vol 19 No.1/Vol 19 No. 2 (January 1989), "Vincent Price: Horror's Crown Prince", pgs 40 - 85; 120
- ^ McGee, Mark Thomas. Roger Corman: The Best of the Cheap Acts, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1988. ISBN 0-89950-330-6
- ^ a b c McGee, Mark Thomas. Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-7864-0137-0
- ^ Pit and the Pendulum. TimeOut.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-07.
