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) Elizabeth taunts her insensate husband. Nicholas opens his eyes and begins laughing hysterically while his wife and the doctor recoil in horror. Believing himself to be Sebastian, he replays the events of his mother and uncle's murders. He overpowers Dr. Leon, believing him to be Bartolome, and Leon falls to his death in the pit while trying to escape. Nicholas seizes Elizabeth, and repeats his father's promise to Isabella to torture her horribly. Francis, having heard Elizabeth's screams, enters the dungeon. Nicholas confuses Francis for Bartolome, and knocks him unconscious. He straps him to a stone slab located directly beneath