The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Day 293 - 10/20/09 - Movie #293

BEFORE: Today is my birthday, and I thought carefully about what movie to watch - I even considered giving myself the day off, but that's against the spirit of this project, and then I'd have to work harder to catch up.

While I'm feeling nostalgic about old Halloween costumes and classic movie monsters, I'm also reminded that in junior high, I discovered the works of Edgar Allan Poe, who became one of my favorite authors. In addition to being a master of macabre stories, Poe wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", which is considered the first detective story - the man inspired an entire genre of fiction! Fans of everything from Sherlock Holmes to last week's "CSI" owe the man a tip of the hat, at least. So I'm giving a birthday (mine, not his) shout-out to Mr. Poe, author of the story this film was based on, plus "Hop-Frog", "The Gold-Bug", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado" and so many other classic tales.

Poe died at the age of 40, and I have now reached the age of 41. (The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long...)

THE PLOT: Francis Barnard goes to Spain, when he hears his sister Elizabeth has died. Her husband Nicholas Medina, the son of the brutest torturer of the Spanish Inquisition, tells him she has died of a blood disease, but Francis finds this hard to believe.

AFTER: This movie was directed by Roger Corman in 1961 as a vehicle for Vincent Price, and I picked it up off of TCM as part of a Vincent Price marathon (which included 3 other Poe-based movies!) Price's creepiness seemed to be custom-made for Poe's gothic horror tales, but this is a very loose adaptation of Poe's short story. There's about 10 minutes of plot, stretched out over an hour and a half. It's an interminable wait before someone finally gets strapped to a slab in the torture chamber under the titular pendulum blade.

When Nicholas Medina (Price) learns that his wife Elizabeth seemed to have died AFTER being buried prematurely, he's racked with guilt and he starts to go off the rails, imagining he is his father, and dusting off the family heirloom torture devices. Medina's father had used the devices on his wife and brother when he learned of their affair, and soon Medina sees adulterers everywhere who need to be punished - I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...

In the original story, a man condemned by the Spanish Inquisition is placed in a dark cell with a deep pit, into which he is expected to fall. When he manages to avoid the pit, he is drugged and strapped to a table under a slowly-descending razor-sharp pendulum aimed at his heart. In a sense, it's a choice between a quick death and a slow, agonizing one, which is more of a hopeless situation than any real choice.

If I may get philosophical for a bit on my birthday, I now see the situation as a metaphor for the human condition (Price makes an allegory to this as well, calling it the razor of destiny, the edge of fate...) There are two ways to check out of this crazy world - the quick way (the pit) and, if you're lucky, the slow way - watching the inevitable get a tiny bit closer with each swing. The end result is perhaps the same, it's just a question of how many ticks of the clock you get. A morbid view of things, perhaps, but I stand by it.

So, happy birthday to me, and to my birthday twins John Krasinski (30), American Idol contestant Michael Johns (31), Survivor contestant Rob Cesternino (32), Snoop Dogg (38), Viggo Mortensen (51), director Danny Boyle (53), ex-Met Keith Hernandez (56), Tom Petty (59), and M*A*S*H's William Christopher (77)
(R.I.P. Mickey Mantle, Art Buchwald, Jerry Orbach and Bela Lugosi)

Another Edgar Allan Poe tale tomorrow...sleep well, kiddies....

RATING: 4 out of 10 family portraits (it's a kind of a schlocky film, in the end...)

SPOOK-O-METER: 3 out of 10 (for Vincent Price creepiness and misc. torture devices)