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
Quatermass and the Pit (film) rights to both these serials were acquired by Hammer Film Productions, and the film adaptations – "The Quatermass Xperiment" and "Quatermass 2", both directed by Val Guest and starring Brian Donlevy as Quatermass – were released in 1955 and 1957 respectively. Kneale went on to write a third Quatermass serial – "Quatermass and the Pit" – for the BBC, which was broadcast in December 1958 and January 1959. Hammer were once again interested in making a film adaptation, and Kneale, who had by then left the BBC and was working as a freelance screenwriter, completed a script in 1961. It