The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film in Panavision and Pathe Color directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story of the same name. Set in sixteenth-century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) poetic." "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...Vincent Price gives a characteristically rococo performance..." "The Monthly Film Bulletin" was negative, writing that the production values "cannot prevent a strong impression of "déjà vu"," and that Kerr, Anders and Carbone were all "glumly wooden" in their performances. Charles Stinson of the "Los Angeles Times" was notably unimpressed by the film: "The uncredited scenario violates Poe's gothic style with passages of flat, modernized dialogue…But the pecadilloes of the script pale beside