The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) Tomb of Ligeia". Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's "The Whip and the Body" (1963) to Dario Argento's " Deep Red " (1975). Stephen King has described one of "Pit"'s major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film. In sixteenth century Spain, Englishman Francis Barnard (John Kerr) visits the castle of his brother-in-law Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) to investigate the mysterious death of his sister Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). Nicholas and his younger sister Catherine (Luana Anders)
Urban Gothic a literary form by Ann Radcliffe in novels such as "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne" (1789), "A Sicilian Romance" (1790) and "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794). It also included Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) and John Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819), which helped found the modern horror genre. This helped create the dark romanticism or American Gothic Fiction of authors like Edgar Allan Poe in works including "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) and Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) and "The Birth-Mark" (1843). This in turn influenced American novelists