The Pit and the Pendulum[6] is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders.

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.

A critical and box-office hit, Pit's success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price.

[9] 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.

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.

[10] When Roger Corman's House of Usher was released in June 1960, its box office success took AIP's James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff by surprise.

[12] However Samuel Z. Arkoff said it was his and James H. Nicholson's decision to make Pit as the second Poe film "because it was a lot more graphic and in the second place, The Masque of the Red Death would have needed a dancing troupe that would have been quite expensive.

"[13] Matheson's script freely devised an elaborate narrative that barely resembled Poe, with only the finale having any similarity at all to the original short story on which the film was based.

In the script, when Francis Barnard is first introduced to Nicholas, the young man asks about loud, strange noises he had heard a few moments earlier.

During Nicholas' death scene, after falling to the bottom of the pit the character originally had dialogue at the point of dying, asking in a voice of horror, "Elizabeth.

Corman decided to jettison the lines, believing that the film should remain purely visual at that point and dialogue would ruin the power of the scene.

[20]To create the flashbacks revealing Nicholas' traumatic experiences, Corman and Crosby attempted to shoot them in a manner that would convey to the audience the character's horror in dredging up nightmares trapped in his subconscious.

To provide great freedom for the planned camera movements, a castle set with many levels and ample space was designed by Daniel Haller.

At Universal Studios, he located numerous discarded pieces from old productions, including massive archways, fireplaces, windows and doorways, and several torture machine props.

Haller selected and rented numerous pieces from these various depositories and had them delivered to California Studios, where the sets for the film were constructed, following his floor plans as closely as possible.

[20] The Pit and the Pendulum was a bigger financial hit than House of Usher, accruing over US$2,000,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals versus the first film's US$1,450,000.

"[23] Variety noted, "The last portion of the film builds with genuine excitement to a reverse-twist ending that might have pleased Poe himself...a physically stylish, imaginatively photographed horror film…"[24] The Los Angeles Examiner said it was "…one of the best "scare" movies to come along in a long time…skillfully directed by Corman…with Vincent Price turning in the acting job of his career….

"[19] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker felt it was "a thoroughly creepy sequence of horrors..."[25] Time called the film "a literary hair-raiser that is cleverly, if self-consciously, Edgar Allan poetic.

"[11] The Hollywood Reporter described it as "... a class suspense/horror film of the calibre of the excellent ones done by Hammer...It is carefully made and has full production values...Vincent Price gives a characteristically rococo performance..."[15] The Monthly Film Bulletin was negative, writing that the production values "cannot prevent a strong impression of déjà vu", and that Kerr, Anders and Carbone were all "glumly wooden" in their performances.

[26] Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times was notably unimpressed by the film: "The uncredited [sic] scenario violates Poe's gothic style with passages of flat, modernized dialogue…But the pecadilloes of the script pale beside the acting…Price mugs, rolls his eyes continuously, and delivers his lines in such an unctuous tone that he comes near to burlesquing the role.

Time Out has opined, "Corman at his intoxicating best, drawing a seductive mesh of sexual motifs from Poe's story through a fine Richard Matheson script.

"[28] In The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, Timothy Sullivan wrote: "The Pit and the Pendulum is even better than its predecessor…The plot is heady stuff, and Roger Corman drives it forward—with wonderful matte shots of the castle perched on the seaside cliff, odd camera angles, the thickest cobwebs in horror-movie history, a spider in the face, and an iron maiden—all before our hero is strapped under the pendulum...in a sequence that still stands one's hair on end.

"[30] 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.

"[7] Glenn Erickson, reviewing the DVD on his DVD Savant website, noted, "Roger Corman's second Edgar Allan Poe adaptation is a big improvement on his first, House of Usher… Remembered as a first-rate chiller by every kid who saw it, Pit and the Pendulum upped the ante for frantic action and potential grue…"[31] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Pit and the Pendulum received an approval rating of 89% based on 25 retrospective reviews with the critical consensus reading "A chilling visual treat, Pit and the Pendulum unites genre masters Roger Corman and Vincent Price with delightfully dark results".

[33] The critical and popular success of The Pit and the Pendulum persuaded AIP's Arkoff and Nicholson to produce more Edgar Allan Poe-based horror films on a regular basis.

[34] The films that followed, all directed by Corman, were Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963, actually based on the novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964).

Lucas noted, "It takes Corman's Freudian theories even further with a nightmarish flashback sequence that plants the seeds of Nicholas's breakdown, and would prove particularly influential on the future course of Italian horror — an influence that can be seen even in productions of the 1970s (Deep Red) and 1980s (A Blade in the Dark).

[36] Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi acknowledged that Ugo Guerra and Elio Scardamaglia, the producers of Mario Bava's The Whip and 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."

"[8] 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 of the decade.

[15] Of the original cast members, only Luana Anders was available at the time, and the new sequence featured her character, Catherine Medina, confined to a lunatic asylum.