The Pit and The Pendulum (1961 Film) - Response

Response

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. According to writer Ed Naha, it also received a better critical response. The majority of the film's reviews were positive.

Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote, "Atmospherically at least—there is a striking fusion of rich colors, plush décor and eerie music—this is probably Hollywood's most effective Poe-style horror flavoring to date…Richard Matheson's ironic plot is compact and as logical as the choice of the small cast…Roger Corman has evoked a genuinely chilling mood of horror." 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…" 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…." Brendan Gill of The New Yorker felt it was "a thoroughly creepy sequence of horrors..." Time called the film "a literary hair-raiser that is cleverly, if self-consciously, Edgar Allan poetic." 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..."

But Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times was notably unimpressed by the film: "The uncredited 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. His mad scenes are just ludicrous. The audience almost died laughing." Price was so infuriated by Stinson's negative review that he wrote a letter to the critic, saying "I find I must break a 25 year determination never to answer a critic. Since your review of The Pit and the Pendulum was obviously not meant to be instructive, and therefore constructive, but only to hurt and humiliate, I'm sure you would enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that it did. My only consolation…is that it is the second greatest box office attraction in the country." Price apparently never sent the letter, placing it instead into his "Letting Off Steam File".

The film's critical reputation has continued to grow over the years and it is now generally held to be one of the best entries in Corman's Poe series. 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." 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." Phil Hardy's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror observed, "If Price's performance is noticeably more extravagant than in the earlier film, this is offset (or matched) by the markedly greater fluidity of camera movement. House of Usher seemed unsure of how to cope with the rush of action as Madeline returned from the grave; The Pit and the Pendulum has no such hesitations. From the great sequence in which Steele lures Price down into the crypt to the finale…its action is terrific." Tim Lucas, in reviewing the film's DVD release in 2001, wrote, "Benefitting from the boxoffice success of House of Usher, Pit is a more elaborate production and features some of the definitive moments of the AIP Corman/Poe series." And 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…"

Recent critical opinion of the film is not all positive. Of the 16 reviews included in a Rotten Tomatoes survey of critics regarding the title, 19% reflect negative reactions. FilmCritic.com opines that the film "...is quite a disappointment...In the end, it feels like one of rush jobs, which of course, it was."