The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film 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 his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence.
The film was the second title in the popular series of Poe adaptations released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman's House of Usher released the previous year. Like House, the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter. A critical and box-office hit, Pits success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price. The series ended in 1964 with the release of The Tomb of Ligeia.
Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963) to Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). Stephen King has described one of Pits major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in post-1960 horror film.
Plot
In 1547 Spain, Englishman Francis Barnard visits the castle of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Medina, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his sister, Elizabeth. Nicholas and his younger sister, Catherine, offer a vague explanation that Elizabeth died from a rare blood disorder three months earlier; Nicholas is evasive when Francis asks for specific details. Francis vows not to leave until he discovers the truth behind his sister's death.
Francis again asks about his sister's death during dinner with the family physician, Dr. Leon. Dr. Leon tells him that his sister died of massive heart failure, literally "dying of fright". Francis demands to see where Elizabeth died. Nicholas takes him to the castle's torture chamber. Nicholas reveals that Elizabeth became obsessed with the chamber's torture devices under the influence of the castle's "heavy atmosphere". After becoming progressively unbalanced, she locked herself into an iron maiden, and died after whispering the name "Sebastian" one day. Francis refuses to believe Nicholas's story.
Francis tells Catherine that Nicholas appears to feel "definite guilt" regarding Elizabeth's death. In response, Catherine talks about Nicholas's traumatic childhood. Their father was Sebastian Medina, a notorious agent of the Spanish Inquisition. When Nicholas was a small child, he explored the forbidden torture chamber when his father entered the room with his mother, Isabella, and Sebastian's brother, Bartolome. Hiding in a corner, Nicholas watched in horror as his father repeatedly hit Bartolome with a red-hot poker, screaming "Adulterer!" at him. After murdering Bartolome, Sebastian began torturing his wife slowly to death in front of Nicholas.
Dr. Leon later informs Catherine and Francis that Isabella was not tortured to death; instead, she was entombed behind a brick wall while still alive. He explains, "The very thought of premature interment is enough to send your brother into convulsions of horror." Nicholas fears that Elizabeth may have been interred prematurely. The doctor tells Nicholas that "if Elizabeth Medina walks the corridors of this castle, it is her spirit, not her living self."
Nicholas believes that his late wife's vengeful ghost is haunting the castle. Elizabeth's room is the source of a loud commotion, now ransacked and her portrait slashed. Her beloved harpsichord plays in the middle of the night. One of Elizabeth's rings shows up on the keyboard. Francis accuses Nicholas of planting the evidence of Elizabeth's "haunting" as an elaborate hoax. Nicholas insists that Francis open his wife's tomb. They discover Elizabeth's putrefied corpse frozen in a position that suggests she died screaming after failing to claw her way out of her sarcophagus. Nicholas faints.