With the Fall of the House of Usher, Theatre of Blood, Dr Phibes and the Pit and the Pendulum, it would be fair to say that Arrow Video is on a Vincent Price kick. Theatre of Blood, their previous release, saw the great man given a level of freedom that he rarely enjoyed throughout his career – for that reason it ranks among his favourite performances. Returning to more traditional territory, Pit and the Pendulum sees the screen icon as the leading man in another of the many Edgar Allen Poe adaptations he made with Roger Corman.
In Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum, Price plays Nicholas (Don) Medina, son of the brutal torturer of the Spanish Inquisition and husband of the late Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). As the film opens, Elizabeth’s brother, Francis (John Kerr), visits Don Medina to find out why his fit and healthy sister died abruptly. Medina reveals that it was the suffocating aura of residual death and despair from his father’s barbaric hand that caused the death of his wife. The guilt of being responsible for his wife’s death and the sights scorched into memory as a child has caused Medina to become emotionally fragile to the extreme. A delicacy threatened by strange things happening in Castle Medina.
Corman is legendary for his thrifty ways, especially when using and reusing sets – a vague sentiment that echoes this review, too. Everything that characterised the previous release, fall of the House of Usher, is present and correct here, with the exception of colour. Using filters to suggest a sense of oddity is a simple but effectively eerie approach and marks it out as different from his Usher adaptation. Just about.
Without Vincent Price, neither The Pit and The Pendulum nor the fall of the House of Usher would be the renowned landmarks they both are.
Almost too predictably, Vincent Price’s commanding performance elevates the otherwise goofy adaptation. The character Don Medina is one who is plagued by death at every corner of his life, from Childhood under the iron rule of his father to his adult self and beyond. As a character who suffers at the hand of his history, Price’s performance infers a resolve hidden deep within. This tenacity eventually snaps, revealing a savage malevolence that the actor takes to naturally. Without Vincent Price, neither The Pit and The Pendulum nor the fall of the House of Usher would be the renowned landmarks they both are. Even with the just as iconic Barbara Steel among the cast, the film belongs to Price and Price alone.
Arrow releases tend to fall into two camps. The first defines the form and stands up as genre classics, films appreciable to the uninitiated. The other group is where The Pit and the Pendulum belongs, which is to say films lost to time. Or testaments to nostalgia. Films that hark back to a far less pretentious era of storytelling; films appreciated by people who saw that during their teenage and early twenties – usually. That, and hardcore fans of titles in the same key as Hammer or Amicus.
The Blu-ray print is glorious. There are still little glimmers, but keeping those little imperfections are key when releasing vintage titles. If the mastering sand-blasted away all imperfections, it would be cultural vandalism, tantamount to removing the soul of the film. That aside, this is the best the film has looked since it was released in 1961, maybe ever. Two extras are attention-grabbing – “An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe with Vincent Price”; and a sequence shot in 1968 used to extend the film for longer TV time slots.
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM IS OUT ON ARROW VIDEO BLU-RAY
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