The Pit and the Pendulum Charles III and Charles IV only four persons were condemned. The Inquisition was, however, abolished during the period of French intervention (1808–13). The original source of the pendulum torture method is one paragraph in the preface of the 1826 book "The history of the Inquisition of Spain " by the Spanish priest, historian, and activist, Juan Antonio Llorente. relating a second-hand account by a single prisoner released from the Inquisition's Madrid dungeon in 1820, who purportedly described the pendulum torture method. Most modern sources dismiss this as fantasy. One theory is that Llorente misunderstood the account he heard; the prisoner
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) these images having a dream-like quality, "twisted and distorted because they were being experienced by someone on the rim of madness". Corman decided to film the flashbacks in monochrome, since he had read that some psychiatrists believe most people dream in "black-and white" imagery. Crosby used wide-angle lenses, violent camera movement, and tilted camera angles to represent the character's feeling of hysteria. The sequences were then printed on blue-tinted stock which was subsequently toned red during development, effectively producing a two-tone image. The highlights were blue, with the shadows rendered as red...producing a deep, bloody quality. The image was then