Horror Film Review: The Pit and the Pendulum (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, 1961’s The Pit and The Pendulum opens in much the same way as The Fall of the House of Usher. A young Englishman (played by John Kerr) rides a horse across a colorful but desolate landscape. A castle sits in the distance.

Of course, as opposed to the 19th Century British setting of The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum takes place in 16th Century Spain, at a time when the country was still scarred by the horrors of the Inquisition. And Francis Barnard is not traveling to the castle to see his fiancée but instead, he’s searching for information about the disappearance of his sister, Elizabeth (played by the one and only, Barbara Steele). At the castle, Francis meets Elizabeth’s husband, Nicholas (Vincent Price) and Nicholas’s sister, Catherine (Luana Anders). Nicholas explains that Elizabeth died under mysterious circumstances, while suffering from a rare blood disorder that seemed to quickly sap away her will to live. Nicholas’s best friend, Dr. Leon (Anthony Carbone), explains that Elizabeth died of fright after she locked herself in one of the iron maidens in the castle’s torture chamber….

Oh yes, the castle has a torture chamber. Nicholas’s father was a leader of the Inquisition and he used the castle as a place to conduct his business. Nicholas’s father was a madman who suspected that his wife was cheating on him. One day, while young Nicholas was exploring the torture chamber, he witnessed his father murder both his wife and his brother. Nicholas watched as his mother was entombed alive and ever since, he’s been terrified of the idea of premature burial. In fact, his fear that he may have buried alive Elizabeth while she was still alive is driving him mad. The sudden arrival of the suspicious Francis doesn’t help matters….

The Pit and the Pendulum opens with splashes of color spreading across the screen, a sign that Corman was once again in a pop art state of mind when he directed this film. The Pit and The Pendulum takes everything that worked (and didn’t work) about The Fall of the House of Usher and it turns it all up by a notch or two. The castle is even more gothic. Vincent Price’s Nicholas is even more mentally fragile than his Roderick Usher, though Nicholas is also a quite a bit more sympathetic. If Roderick was a control freak who used his family’s curse as an excuse to embrace his own authoritarian tendencies, Nicholas is just a frail man suffering from PTSD. He’s definitely more of a victim than a victimizer … or, at least, he is at first. Much like Mark Damon is The Fall of the House of the Usher, John Kerr is a bit of a stiff in the role of Francis but it doesn’t matter. Vincent Price is the main attraction here and Corman’s direction shows that he understood that.

And then there’s the Pendulum. It takes a while for the Pendulum and its swinging blade to make an appearance but when it does, it lives up to the hype. The Pendulum swings and Corman goes all out, zooming into Price’s crazed eyes while the Pendulum comes closer and closer to its latest victim. The images are tinted red and green and the Pendulum itself seems to swing in a slow motion, the cinematic equivalent of a nightmare come to life.

The Pit and the Pendulum is a wonderful work of gothic pop art. Featuring Vincent Price at his most wonderfully unhinged, this is a film we should all watch this Halloween.

Pit and the Pendulum (1961, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)

Yuma (1971, directed by Ted Post)

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

At the start of this made-for-TV western, experienced lawman Dave Harmon (Clint Walker) has just been appointed the new marshal of Yuma. He’s served as the marshal of several towns, all of which were near rowdy army bases. He’s a laconic, no-nonsense lawman who is quick with a gun and smart enough to negotiate with the local Indian tribes.

As soon as Harmon rides into town, he comes across the King Brothers (Bruce Glover and Bing Russell) making trouble. He kills one of the brothers in a saloon and then takes the other one to jail, where he’s mysteriously gunned down during a midnight jailbreak. It turns out that there’s a third Harmon brother, cattle baron Arch King (Morgan Woodward), and he rides into town looking for revenge. He gives Harmon a set amount of time to find and arrest his brother’s killer or Arch and his men are going to return to town and kill Harmon.

Fortunately, Harmon has a witness to the jailbreak murder. Andres (Miguel Alejandro) is a young, Mexican orphan who sleeps at the jail. He witnessed the murder but he only saw that the killer was wearing what appeared to be army boots. Harmon’s investigation brings him into conflict with the local army base’s commandant (Peter Mark Richman) and also leads to the discovery of a plot to defraud the local Indians.

The main problem with Yuma is that it was clearly designed to be a pilot for a weekly television series and, as a result, it introduces a lot of characters who don’t get much to do. There’s a lot of talk about how Harmon is searching for the men who earlier killed his family but that subplot is never resolved. (If Yuma had been picked up as a weekly show, maybe it would have been.) Yuma has to set up the premise for a potential show and tell a complete story in just 70 minutes. That’s a lot to handle and Yuma ends up feeling rushed and incomplete.

As a B-western for undemanding fans of the genre, it’s acceptable. Clint Walker was a convincing lawman and the film was directed by Ted Post, who knew how to stage a gunfight. But it’s not really a western that you’re going to remember for long after you watch it.

“and then all is madness”: PIT AND THE PENDULUM (AIP 1961)

Posted on May 14, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

How have I ignored Roger Corman here for so long, save for a short “Cleaning Out the DVR” review of THE TERROR ? The King of the Low Budget Quickies has long been a favorite filmmaker of mine, and has probably had more impact on American cinema than people realize. Well, now that TCM is running its month-long salute to AIP, I’m about to rectify that oversight. (By the way, Corman himself is cohosting the retrospective every Thursday night along with TCM’s own Ben Mankiewicz!)

American International Pictures scored a hit with 1960’s HOUSE OF USHER, an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation starring Vincent Price and directed by Corman. Studio honchos James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff looked at the box office numbers and, realizing they had a cash cow on their hands, asked Corman to produce a follow-up. Rapid Roger decided on PIT AND THE PENDULUM, shot in 15 days for less…

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Trailer: A Dangerous Method (dir. by David Cronenberg)

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Arleigh

To say that I am a huge fan of Canadian auteur and all-around genius filmmaker David Cronenberg would be the understatement of the decade. I count him as one of the greatest filmmakers of the last 30 years. Seen his style go from grindhouse video nasties type of horror to the sublime. He’s one filmmaker who has never had to compromise his filmmaking style to suit the audience. You either accept what he has crafted or not.

The last 5-6 years has seen his stock rise amongst the film community as films like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises has gotten him recognition from the Academy voters, Film Circles and others in the film elite community. At the same time these films have been widely regarded by film fans as some of the best of the past decade. It helps that he seems to have found a partner-in-crime in another auteur with actor Viggo Mortensen who played lead in both those films.

Now for 2011 the two partner up again for the third time for Cronenberg’s film adaptation of the stage play “The Talking Cure” which itself was adapted from the non-fiction book, A Most Dangerous Method. The film is called A Dangerous Method and stars Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein. These three become the focal point of a sort of relationship triangle as the friendship between Freud and his younger apprentice in Jung becomes even more complicated when young Sabina get’s between the two men who would give rise to the study of psychoanalysis.

That brief synopsis doesn’t make this film very interesting at first glance, but this is Cronenberg who never picks projects and stories to tell unless it appealed to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if the film wasn’t just a story about three individuals and their relationships towards each other, but something even more abstract as Cronenberg’s bound to explore the early days of psychoanalysis itself.

Here’s to hoping A Dangerous Method delivers on everything fans of Cronenberg have come to expect from him…or not expect as the man has a tendency to surprise with each new film.