The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)

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nTitle: The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)

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nDirector: Stuart Gordon

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nCast: Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Jonathan Fuller, Ronande Ricci, Mark Margolis, Stephen Lee

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nThe casual movie watcher might not know who Stuart Gordonnis, but for those gore hounds out there that enjoy their films gory and fillednwith nudity, Stuart Gordon is a house hold name, no, Stuart Gordon is a God! EarlynStuart Gordon films were a special bunch, they all featured extensive amountsnof gore, blood and nudity and a lot of them were based on or inspired bynvarious H.P. Lovecraft stories. Good examples of the kind of gory mayhem thatnGordon is capable of in his films are Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986)nand Dagon (2001), all three inspired in one form or another by the works ofnH.P. Lovecraft. Gordon could really go nuts with the gore in his films! Evernwanted to see a deformed human bite a chunk of flesh from a prostitute’s breast?nThen you should see Castle Freak (1995), an obscure yet highly dramatic horrornfilm. That’s the thing about those films that Stuart Gordon made with Full MoonnPictures, they were good, but they are so obscure! The reason for them beingnoverlooked is because Full Moon films were made for a niche audience, a smallngroup of people who appreciated them. Fans of Full Moon Pictures are the kindnof audience that knows they are watching low brow entertainment, and they lovenit that way. Unfortunately, a lot of those Full Moon Films don’t enjoy veryngood distribution nowadays, many of them have kind of gotten lost in thenshuffle. Save for getting them through Full Moon Direct, you probably won’t benable to get a hold of some of the more obscure ones, like Gordon’s The Pit andnthe Pendulum, a film that I had not seen for years, because I could never get anhold of it. I found it in one of those 8 horror film collections that EchonBridge Entertainment has been releasing, and it was accompanied by 7 other totallynunknown horror films; so you could say I found this copy of The Pit and thenPendulum by some sort of miracle. 

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nI personally always felt that Stuart Gordon was too good fornFull Moon; a production company that specialized on making the cheapest kind ofnfilms imaginable. Still, even with all the budgetary constraints that accompanyna Full Moon production, Gordon managed to make a couple of good films withnthem, namely Castle Freak (1995) and the film I’ll be reviewing today The Pitnand the Pendulum, two of the best films Full Moon ever produced. But nonworries, Gordon’s always worked best when handling small budgets and smallnstories. Sometimes, he’d get too ambitious for the budget he could get and thenresulting film would end up being goofy. A good example of this would be RobotJox (1989), a film about giant robots that ended up being extremely goofy fornvarious reasons, but mostly because it required a bigger budget. The Pit andnthe Pendulum was another one of Gordon’s ambitious projects that didn’t haventhe budget it required. The story takes place during the days of the Spanish Inquisition,nwhich already means you’re gonna need a decent budget for sets and wardrobe ofnthe era; unfortunately, the film was made with a mere two million dollars! Thisnis probably the reason why some of the sets look completely half assed ornunfinished, a disappointing aspect of the film. Roger Corman’s version of thisnstory had better sets! And that was made in 1961! But incredible as it maynseem, Gordon actually managed to make an interesting film none the less, goofynyes, aloof and filled with dialog that does not fit the era, but still, highlynwatchable.

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nThe hero of the story is a bread maker named Antonio; anpeaceful man selling bread in his little town, the problem comes when the lovenof his life, a woman named Maria is accused of being a witch! By orders of thenGrand Inquisitor Torquemada, she is to be tortured and put to death. Now,nAntonio must infiltrate Torquemada’s castle and save the love of his life fromncertain death. Can he make it in time to save her from a torturous death andnescape the torture chamber alive? Or will he end up facing the horrors ofntorture himself?

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nFilms about the inquisition make me so angry; I just hatenthe fact that the Inquisition even happened because it shows the extreme stepsnthat the Catholic Church and the governments of the world took in order tonspread Catholicism through the world. Basically they forced religion onto people;nif you rejected Jesus you were tortured to death! It’s a nauseating idea; it’snsomething you should think about if you are a catholic! Catholicism is a religiousnorganization with some really dark, evil foundations; it’s a religion that graftednitself and its ideas onto people’s consciousness via violence and death, whichnof course goes completely against what the bible and Jesus stands for. Backnthen the church was so powerful that whatever they said was law, and so, no onendared defy them. This type of thing went on in many countries; on this film itnhappened in Spain, but other films represent the same situations in Americannand England. This went on in the world until Catholicism became the biggestnreligion in the world. It is frightening to learn how religious fanatism can gonthis far; I mean, who the hell wants to be tortured to death by a bunch ofnreligious fanatics? Back in those days, if you didn’t play along you would die.nI often times wonder how I would have ended up had I lived in those days;nprobably tortured and burned at the stake! Other movies dealing with similarnsubject matter are Mark of the Devil (1970), The Conqueror Worm (1968) and ThenCrucible (1996). You might also want to check out Roger Corman’s The Pit andnthe Pendulum (1961) which starred Vincent Price. I mention these other films inncase you feel like exploring these themes a little more. It truly is a sad pagenin human history.

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nBut this is Stuart Gordon’s take on these themes, and well,nthe more gruesome aspects are not glazed over! These inquisitors were sonfreaking fanatical that if they discovered you were a heretic after you werendead, they would dig up your corpse and torture your freaking corpse! The Pitnand the Pendulum has all the gore and nudity you’d expect from a Gordon film; there’snthis whole scenes that’s all about the priests getting off on taking thenclothes off a supposed “witch” just to grope and get a look at her body, Ingotta say, nudity is kind of gratuitous on this film. And yeah, it has that goofinessnthat seems to be present in so many Stuart Gordon films. There’s an unevenness inntone, it starts out like a love story, then it’s this graphic film about theninquisition, but sprinkled with what comes off as unintended humor, especially whennit comes to the dialog, which is sometimes too modern. So in that sense thenfilm is all over the place. By far the worst part about the film is its leadingnman; Antonio as played by Jonathan Fuller. The guy looks too goofy to be a leading man,nhe made the film come off as a comedy at times, I just couldn’t take the guynseriously, he does not look like the hero type at all! Which is a shame becausen‘Torquemada’ the inquisitor played by Lance Henriksen comes off as intenselynevil; no holds barred the best thing about the movie is Henriksen. If you cannbelieve it, even Oliver Reed shows up in this film for a couple of minutes as ancardinal sending a message from the pope; it’s kind of funny actually, a highncaliber actor like Reed on a cheap horror movie like this one!  I guess he is on this one because of hisninvolvement in Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), yet another film about witches.nActually, Gordon had Peter O Toole in mind to play Torquemada, but I guess thatndeal never came through.  As for Gordon’snregular gang of actors we get Jeffrey Combs playing one of the Inquisitorsnhenchmen and Gordon’s own wife, Carolyn Purdy Gordon playing a high class ladynseeing the corpse of her husband defiled.

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nThe interesting thing about this film is that even though it’sncheap looking and has copious amounts of goofy dialog, it’s still very watchable.nIt’s interesting to see Gordon take a departure from adapting H.P. Lovecraftnstories onto film, which is what he is primarily known for; but with The Pitnand the Pendulum he dabbles with Edgar Allan Poe, so in that sense it’s anchange of pace for Gordon. Final words on this film here is that it’s notnGordon’s best, but it’s not his worst either. You’re gonna see all sorts of torture devices on this one, so be ready for that! The film shows its budgetarynlimitations at times but keeps you interested because of its gruesome premise; let’snface it, the church torturing and killing people in gruesome ways just so theynbelieve in Jesus is always a shocker, and if you know Gordon, then you know henis all about shock!

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nRating: 3 out of 5

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