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
Gothic film audience response" characterize Gothic films like they did the literary works. "The Encyclopedia of the Gothic" said the foundation of Gothic film was the combination of Gothic literature, stage melodrama, and German expressionism. In "The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction", Misha Kavka says Gothic film is not an established genre, rather contributing Gothic images, plots, characters, and styles to films. These elements are often found in "the broader category of "horror"". Kavka quotes William Patrick Day's definition of the Gothic, "[it] tantalizes us with fear, both as its subject and its effect; its does so, however, not primarily through characters