Nightmare Fuel 2018: Day 2 – The Pit and the Pendulum

Perhaps I should rephrase the title as “3 Pits and 3 Pendulums” or something like that, ’cause we’re gonna be talking about three adaptations of the venerable Poe tale today.

The story itself is not a very long one, only about ten pages or so in my book (a collection of all of Poe’s fiction, poetry included), and tells the story of a man’s torture after having been convicted by the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo in the early years of the nineteenth century (yup, the Inquisition lasted that long, though by the time the story takes place it was very much more of a figurehead court than anything effective).  There’s more vivid description of the man’s surroundings than anything in the way of actual plot, which just involves him being tossed in prison, passing out, waking up in a chamber containing a pit, waking up strapped to a board with a pendulum blade swinging over his head, and escaping his predicament.  Suffice it to say, adapting such a short, plot-less story into a feature-length film requires a bit of screenwriting finesse.  In each of the three cases here, the filmmakers went their own ways in adding material to Poe’s in order to properly flesh things out.

We begin with likely the most famous cinematic adaptation of the story, 1961’a The Pit and the Pendulum, directed by the (in)famous Roger Corman.

The second in Corman’s Poe series following the success of 1960’s House of Usher, this film stars Vincent Price (who also starred in Usher) as a man in sixteenth-century Spain whose wife has recently died.  Said wife’s brother heads off to Price’s castle to get some answers, as precious few had been made known.  While he’s there, strange things happen, and he gets some insights into the death via flashbacks from Price, some of which also elucidate Price’s own past.  With Price’s madness becoming clear, the brother eventually finds himself hooked up to the eponymous torture device.

Like many of Corman’s period pieces around that time, the set decoration and production design are fairly solid, and there’s a minor feeling of gothic dread hanging over the whole proceedings, though the trippy wet paint effects during the opening credits definitely let us know that we’ve just entered the 60s.  Price is somewhat hammy here (yeah, here), but it mostly works to his character’s advantage, what with the madness and all.  Tony-winner John Kerr works well as Price’s foil, mostly with his stoic sternness juxtaposed against Price’s more animated wiles.  Cinematographer Floyd Crosby (father of musician David Crosby and the man who lensed High Noon and other entries in Corman’s Poe series) helped keep the dread alive not only in his usual shots, but also by filming the flashbacks in a blue-tinted and vignetted manner, giving them q rather surreal bearing.  Corman and editor Anthony Carras made the pendulum appear to be moving sinisterly quickly by removing every other frame from the footage, adding a subtly jerky motion to the increased speed.  Richard Matheson’s story extensions allow for an understandable and relatively believable route to the pendulum to form, even if said path is slightly contrived.  Regardless, his dialogue is strong, especially for the time.

Overall, the film is damn solid, even without my pro-Price bias.  It’s a classic work of cinematic horror that does more than justice to the source material without ever watering it down.

Similar praise can be given to our next adaptation, though a bit tempered.

Thirty years after the Corman version, we get Stuart Gordon’s take on the material.  A few years after his major breakthrough with Re-Animator and following the awesomely campy Robot Jox, Gordon made this version of The Pit and the Pendulum under Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures banner, the same company that brought us the Puppet Master series and, later, the Evil Bong and Gingerdead Man series, among many others.  I bring this up because I think it helps to explain the somewhat jumbled tone.

This time out, the story is expanded into a full-on Inquisition feature.  Set a few centuries before the story (I don’t know if any adaptation has been set in the early nineteenth century, honestly), we’re introduced to Maria and Antonio, lovers trying to get by as bakers.  They’re not too keen on the Inquisition’s auto-de-fes (is that how that plural works?), and Maria is especially put off by them, leading to her speaking out against the executions of some locals.  Torquemada hisself catches wind and has Maria arrested and placed before the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft, while Antonio sets off the infiltrate the dungeon and release his love.

Right off the bat, we’re struck with layers of tonal dissonance.  The scenes with the two lovers are scored similarly to contemporary Disney family fare, like Rookie of the Year and the like, and it’s all borderline treacly; then BAM! we’re shoved into the Inquisition scenes, which are presented darkly, bleakly, and violently.  Within these scenes, though, there continues to run a vein of dissonance as the acting and screenplay bring in some heavy comedic influences amidst a sea of torture and lasciviousness.  There’s a strange nigh-cartoon-y vibe to many bits, as though Gordon had some advance knowledge of the following year’s Army of Darkness and used it for some inspiration here.  Regardless of why, these disparate elements muddy the tonal waters and preclude any real immersion in the story.  It can be fun at times, admittedly, but these feelings are few and far between.  Rather we’re usually left to gape at the oscillations between earnestness and light-heartedness bordering on sophomoric frivolity.  It’s an odd watch, lemme tell ya, though not unusual given Gordon’s filmography.

There’s also an added element of sex here, particularly some sado-masochistic stuff.  Torquemada is seen in both lights, eager to inflict torture on his prisoners, yet also ever demanding of a good thrashing for himself, ostensibly as some form of flagellatory penance.  He and the rest of the Inquisition are cast in a comically pro-torture light, using torture not just because of its effectiveness, but because they kinda like it.  “What do you mean we can’t torture?” one says, while another points out that “Confessions are only accepted under torture”.  For me this is the writing staff passing some retrospective judgment on the harsh methods of the Inquisition without employing, like, a hint of nuance.

In the film’s favor, though, is a rather vaunted and talented cast, one of the best I’ve ever seen for a Full Moon film.  We’ve got Lance Henriksen really getting into the role of Grand Inquisitor Torquemada; Dr. Herbert West hisself, Jeffrey Combs as Francisco, one of Torquemada’s co-inquisitors; Mark Margolis (you might know him as Tio Hector Salamanca from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) as Mendoza, one of the more blood-thirsty of Torquemada’s crew and the one who happily flails the Grand Inquisitor upon request; Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore‘s grandmother, among other roles) as an already-imprisoned witch who tries to mentor Maria upon her imprisonment; and our old pal Oliver Reed popping in as a cardinal who disapproves of Torquemada’s methods (one of the film’s flagrant historical inaccuracies, as the papacy actually lauded Torquemada’s work).  Not too shabby, right?  Unfortunately, several of the supporting actors turn in soap opera-style performances, while the rest are let down by an uneven script.

At the end of the day, this 1991 version doesn’t quite hold up to Corman’s 1961 version, but it’s a relatively fun adaptation that certainly works as a leisurely, booze-paired viewing.  That may sound like faint praise, but there’s always room in this world for nice little flicks you can have fun watching with your friends and some brews.

And even that faint praise can’t truly be leveled at our final adaptation, this one a 2009 effort from director David DeCoteau.

Now, like the previous adaptations, this one had to pad the story’s plot out a bit in order to get to feature length.  But rather than actually conform to the themes of torture, of the the Inquisition, of even things happening in a distant past, this one is set in modern day and has precious little to do with anything in Poe’s writing.  The plot follows a septet of college students who travel to a scientist’s estate to engage in an experiment that looks to test the limits of pain and whether or not said limits can be surmounted.  These students gradually vanish, ostensibly meeting grave ends (we’ll talk about that in a moment), until one finally finds himself strapped to a table beneath the titular blade.

So, right off, I need to point out that this is a DeCoteau picture during the period (still on-going) when DeCoteau has seemingly given up and begun making all sorts of lazy garbage, mostly filmed at his own house, that gets marketed to families or fans of awkward soft-core porn (it was rather surreal watching A Talking Cat!?! and recognizing the same living room, complete with a seat made from a bisected car, that was used as a set in Serena the Sexplorer).  This explains the low production values, the apparent lack of visible budget, and the pronounced presence of soft-core homo-eroticism.  That last one may sound odd, but DeCoteau’s later work is littered with a bunch of young dudes wandering about in their underwear and occasionally exploring one another.  (I remember watching Badass Showdown in hopes of seeing a later-era Cynthia Rothrock actioner only to be met by an endless parade of shirtless dudes working out while Rothrock just kinda coaches them intermittently.)  Honestly, it’s kinda the reason I wanted to see it, to see just how crappily an adaptation can turn out.  Call me crazy.

But that’s only the beginning of this film’s issues.  The script, penned by one Simon Savory (who also wrote the script for DeCoteau’s House of Usher, which I’m disgusted to say I’m curious about after this trainwreck), is downright awful, its dialogue sounding like ad libs were put to paper and reenacted later.  It’s not helped by a gaggle of veritable non-actors trying (?) to act yet succeeding only in doing an impression of anthropomorphic building materials.  Bart Voitila, playing Kyle (of course), is the absolute worst, every line issuing forth from his maw thudding straight to the ground without fanfare.  The editing is frankly amateur, with poor shot matching, awkward insert shots, and an abundance of hanging action, a hallmark of this era of DeCoteau’s work.  This editing is illustrated in all its wonder during the first death scene, wherein the seductive scientist leading the experiment (I’m not sure what they’re doing can be called an “experiment”, but it’s the film’s word, so I’m gonna keep using it) straddles the underwear-clad young man as he goes in for some bench press action (he’s been getting ramped up while she’s been undressing him, but he really perked up when he saw the bench and learned he was gonna pump some iron) and sorta grinds on him in a clothed, simulated sex act.  At least, I think that’s what was going on, the editing kept cutting and letting the action hang and throwing in some goofy effects, all to the point that the scene is nearly incomprehensible.  And that’s just one scene out of many following the same basic model.  Beyond that, the cast can’t agree on the pronunciation of Gemma’s name, alternating constantly between a soft and hard G.  The sound design is atrocious; it seems as though only one mic is ever used, and it may actually be the on-board mic, shockingly.  The lighting and cinematography are so bungled that several exterior establishing shots (I repeat: establishing shots) are actually overexposed.

In an unexpected turn, the house used as the only set isn’t the usual DeCoteau house, but rather a slightly differently-decorated one that for all I know is next door to the usual haunt.  In an even more unexpected turn, the pendulum theme pops up throughout the film (screw the pit, I guess): it’s tied in with a theme of time and clocks in general, manifested in an omnipresent ticking sound (more stopwatch than Captain Hook’s crocodile (or octopus if, for some reason, you’re more a fan of Return to Neverland than Peter Pan)) and the constantly-recurring superimposed image of a clock face over the frame.  None of it really amounts to much, but at least they sorta/kinda tried to do something with anything, more than can be said of other works from DeCoteau these days.

But there’s precious little purpose to anything brought up in the needlessly convoluted narrative, and the climactic pendulum is only there to justify the title and thus the marketing avenues opened therewith.  It’s a truly heinous film, devoid of any value whatsoever, unless you want some soft-core gay porn and don’t mind that it’s padded with bullshit and not the least bit sexy (or so my straight sensibilities assume).  Everything about it is cheap and lazy and just plain bad.  Don’t see this one, there’s plenty of better adaptations.  Hell, there’s even a 1983 short version made by the Czech stop-motion maestro Jan Švankmajer, The Pendulum, the Pit, and Hope, so there’s no excuse for settling for this garbage.

That’s quite the range there, eh?  And that’s just three and a half examples of the variety of adaptations out there of The Pit and the Pendulum.  No matter the direction they choose to go with it, you’re guaranteed an interesting experience based mostly on how the filmmakers choose to expand the story and integrate the infamous torture devices.  Give any a shot (well, not DeCoteau’s…), or even give the story a read (the text can be found online here).