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) the Body" (1963), had "shown me an Italian print of "The Pit and the Pendulum" before I started writing it: 'Give us something like this', they said." When asked if another of his films, "The Long Hair of Death" (1964), was inspired by Corman's film, Gastaldi replied, "Yes, of course! "The Pit and the Pendulum" had a big influence on Italian horror films. Everybody borrowed from it." Stephen King felt that one of the film's most powerful shocks—the discovery of Elizabeth's hideously decayed corpse—had a major impact on the genre and served as one of the most significant horror sequences