The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

the audience applauded

Purely Joyful Movie!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This is a very scary movie. It has great acting. It also has a great special effects. It also has a great story line. This is scarier then The Exorcist and that is not easy to do. 7.1 is a good ratting. But this is such a great movie that 7.1 is underrating it. I give it 10 out of 10. This movie is scarier then A Nightmare on elm street and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then Friday the 13th and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then Halloween and that is not easy to do. This is a great movie see it. It is scarier then The silence of the lambs could ever be. See this movie. It is a great movie. It is very scary. It is scarier then The Shinning and that is not easy to do.

Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum' - it's been a long time since I have seen it - I recalled bits and pieces of the film and remembered it was good, then I re-watched the film recently and I have to say "It really is a terrific mystery-horror classic!" It's even better than I recalled it to be.Vincent Price is outstanding (as usual) as Nicholas Medina - the tormented soul who witnessed the fact his parents had a dark secret as a child of 10. I cannot say more or I will ruin the film for first time viewers. I must mention the costuming, sets and over all atmosphere - they all are gorgeous! The film feels like a Gothic period piece as it should. The movie is well worth watching if you enjoy Price's films, Poe's stories/poems and a good classic mystery-horror.What an ending! What I recalled most vividly about the movie was in fact the pit and the pendulum. That pendulum is unforgettable!! 9.5/10

With "The Fall of the House of Usher", American International went into the world of macabre through the Gothic world of Edgar Allan Poe, and continued with perhaps his eeriest story. Some of Poe's stories were so short that to make a movie version out of them meant altering the original tale a great deal, and that meant pretty much adding background and characters not included prior. The horrific "The Pit and the Pendulum" starts off slowly, but like a symphony, gains power as it develops. Vincent Price is a seemly moody, if kindly baron, the son of a man obsessed with torture. As a child, Price witnessed his father kill his own mother and brother by horrific, torturous means, and has desperately tried to destroy that legacy even though the "Dante's Inferno" like torture chamber remains. He broods over the memory of his late wife (Barbara Steele), a darkly beautiful woman who started off as a loving spouse but slowly changed as the secrets of the castle began to take over her spirit.With his long face and somewhat tired looking eyes, Price was destined to play horrific roles as he got older. Undesputibly the king of horror after starring in "House of Wax", Price found his niche when Roger Corman cast him in the string of "Poe" films. Many of his characters are indistinguishable other than their names and hair color. They all start off as moody rather than obviously evil, but half way through the movie have transformed into a human monster, a bit perverse and possibly sadomasochistic. They are also surrounded by women with ulterior motives, and in this case, the ulterior motive of supposedly deceased wife Steele is to drive her "widowed" husband mad so she can be with her lover and take over the estate herself.With her dark, steely eyes, Barbara Steele had the look of an evil woman, and nobody could glare with deadly intentions better than her. This was made right after she exploded on the screen in the Italian horror classic "Black Sunday", and while her on-screen time here is limited, she makes the most out of it, whether delightedly kissing her lover right in front of the passed out Price, verbally telling him afterwords of how she plotted this from the beginning, and finally, the delightful punishment she gets which is one of the eeriest film endings since Bela Lugosi got his come-uppance in the original "The Raven". Of course, there's a less fiendish romantic couple here, Steele's brother (John Kerr) and Price's sister (Luana Anders), but they are not nearly as interesting as the evil characters.American International's horror films dominated the 1960s along with the British Hammer films as the spookiest films since the early days of talkies. They are even more Gothic with the eerie looking color photography than the classics directed by Tod Browning and James Whale, and certainly better than low-budget Universal films which lacked the underlying mystery of the earlier classics and these grand guignol that hold up very well today and have obviously influenced the generation of horror movie directors who came along years after these films were released.

After the mysterious death of Elizabeth Barnard Medina (Barbara Steele), her brother Francis Barnard (John Kerr) travels from London to Spain and without previous notice he arrives at the castle of her husband Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price). He is received by Nicholas' sister Catherine Medina (Luana Anders) that invites Francis to have dinner with her brother and her.Francis learns that their father Sebastian Medina was a cruel torturer of the Spanish Inquisition and Nicholas is a traumatized man that has witnessed the murder of his uncle Bartolome (Charles Victor) and his adulterer mother Isabella (Mary Menzies) being tortured and killed by his father when he was a kid. During the dinner, the family's friend Doctor Charles Leon (Antony Carbone) unexpectedly arrives and Francis discovers that his sister died of heart attack after visiting the torture chamber in the dungeons. Soon the place is haunted by strange events and Nicholas suspects of his servants Maximillian (Patrick Westwood) and Maria (Lynette Bernay) but Francis is convinced that Nicholas is the responsible for the death of his sister. "Pit and the Pendulum" is one of the best Roger Corman's movies despite the poor scenario that shakes in many scenes. The last time that I saw this movie was on 16 November 1999 on cable television and today I have just watched it again on DVD. The creepy story of Edgar Allan Poe is still engaging even when the viewer watches more than two times. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Mansão do Terror" ("The Manor of Horror")