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
Quatermass and the Pit (film) television in 1979, an edited version of which was also given a limited cinema release under the title "The Quatermass Conclusion". "Quatermass and the Pit" marked the return to directing for the cinema for Roy Ward Baker and he went on to direct such films as "The Anniversary" (1968), "Moon Zero Two" (1969), "The Vampire Lovers" (1970), "Scars of Dracula" (1970), "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde" (1971) and "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" (1974) for Hammer. He also directed "Asylum" (1972), "And Now the Screaming Starts!" (1973) and "The Vault of Horror" (1973) for Hammer's rival, Amicus Productions.