The Pit and the Pendulum (1991 film) The Pit and the Pendulum (1991 film) The Pit and the Pendulum (released on DVD in the United States as The Inquisitor) is a 1991 American horror film directed by Stuart Gordon and based on the eponymous short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The film is an amalgamation of the aforementioned story with other Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", and it also appropriates the anecdote of "The Sword of Damocles", reassigning it to the character of Torquemada. In 1492 Spain, Grand Inquisitor Torquemada leads a bloody reign of terror. Opposed to the use of torture by the Church, Maria speaks
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