THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1991 Ken Johnson
97 min, Not Rated, Horror, 1991 Director: Stuart Gordon Cast: Lance Henriksen, Rona De Ricci, Jonathan Fuller, Frances Bay, Mark Margolis, Jeffrey Combs, Stephen Lee, Tom Towles, William J. Norris, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Oliver Reed
The film is set in the 1400s during the Spanish Inquisition. Baker Fuller and his wife De Ricci make bread to sell at the frying of a witch, Purdy-Gordon. They are against the burning of people as witches so they plan to stay just long enough to sell their bread. They get stuck in a crowd and are forced to watch the burning. After the witch is fried the guards bring out her son and whip him. De Ricci runs up to the guards and tell them to stop beating the boy, and the guards put her in prison as a witch. Fuller went to the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, Henricksen, and asks if he would free De Ricci because she is not a witch. Henricksen says that she will stand trial and that will determine whether she is a witch or not.
Instead of being a slasher film about some maniac on the loose killing nubile co-eds, like most modern horror films, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is more of a horror of the tortures humans do to themselves. However the film has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe's story, which it is supposedly based on. The video cassette box states on it "Edgar Allan Poe's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM"; it should just state "THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM." There is however a scene with Oliver Reed that is quite close to "The Cask of the Amontillado." The pit and the pendulum, which played such an important role in Edgar's story, take a back seat spot in the film. The film could have been much better if given, maybe, a better cast and if it followed Edgar Allan Poe's short story more. The whole part of the short story where the man is hooked onto the ground and the pendulum comes swinging closer and closer is put into a small couple of minutes scene. The rest of the film is based on Rona De Ricci's time spent in the dungeons and her husband Fuller trying to save her. All of this wasn't even hinted at in Edgar Allan Poe's short story.
This film is part of a series of produced by Harry Alan Towers that are coming over from Italy. The only other films that I know of that are also coming over to the U.S. from Italy are BURIED ALIVE (which is already in video stores) and THE HOUSE OF USHER. There are probably others. This film (and the other two listed above) are direct-to-video releases.
For an enjoyability rating the highest I can give it is a three (out of a 0 - 5 scale). I was very disappointed in the film considering the amount of time it took to be able to check it out of the video store, it was out every time I went in. THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is not rated but contains graphic violence and female nudity. If you have an empty night and you're in the mood for a "different" horror film you might give this one a glance.
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews