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
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film) of how to cope with the rush of action as Madeline returned from the grave; "The Pit and the Pendulum" has no such hesitations. From the great sequence in which Steele lures Price down into the crypt to the finale…its action is terrific." Tim Lucas, in reviewing the film's DVD release in 2001, wrote, "Benefitting from the box-office success of "House of Usher", "Pit" is a more elaborate production and features some of the definitive moments of the AIP Corman/Poe series." And Glenn Erickson, reviewing the DVD on his "DVD Savant" website, noted, "Roger Corman's second Edgar Allan Poe adaptation