It’s always instructive to watch a few movies by the same director in quick succession, so after the joy that is the Masque of the Red Death I was very much looking forward to moving backwards in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe series to his second offering, Pit and the Pendulum. You don’t watch any of the films in the cycle if you’re looking for a true to the text adaptation of Poe’s stories, and Pit is no different in this respect. In Masque, Corman departed from the story only in order to enhance the movie experience (especially with the brilliant ‘brothers of death’ scenes) to great success. In comparison here he seems almost bored with the story, picking out the bits that seem to fit together well and leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps.
The problem is that they never do seem to fit together. Corman’s usually adept pacing seems to have deserted him here, with one or two early scenes expected to propel the movie through what seems an interminable succession of pointless interactions until we get to the supposed climax. The weakness of the script becomes apparent in these scenes. Any suspense remaining from Poe’s tale is allowed to evaporate before the eye and Richard Matheson, Corman’s screenwriter, puts nothing in their place to ratchet up the tension. The characters seem listless and bored, going through the motions and doing little else. The effect at times conveys the impression of watching a bad school pantomime, albeit one played out on the sumptuous sets that Corman always seemed to muster for his Poe movies.
This is especially criminal when he had a talent like Vincent Price to play with. Sadly, even he has nothing to chew on, and his sporadic appearances don’t bring the usual vitality and zest that you expect from Price. He’s at his best during the flashbacks (another irritant, necessary but badly done) and in the final scenes, moments which are depressingly fleeting. Don’t get me wrong, his individual performance is excellent, brilliantly portraying Nicholas Medina’s descent into insanity. The problem is that he gets no support whatsoever from the rest of the cast so his character seems to dangle in the breeze with nothing much to do. John Kerr is particularly atrocious as Francis Bernard, acting as a talent vacuum in every scene. Though most of the characters are pretty boring but not much else, he brings a special talent to making his both worthless and infuriating. By the end you’ll praying that Price drops the ‘pendulum’ before it’s too late.
There’s something especially disheartening about sticking with an unrewarding film right until the end on the promise that the climax will make it all worth the pain. Again, this is sadly not to be. Due to the crass pacing mentioned above, the end, when it comes, is a hurried affair and really isn’t worth waiting for. In essence, Corman tries to present a revenge story with a twist but succeeds in making us indifferent to the initial grievance, bores us into forgetting who’s doing the deceiving and finally screws up the grand finale.
I can’t hide the fact that I was very disappointed with this film. It’s a lazy, empty effort which is disgraceful coming from someone with the talent of Roger Corman. The script is below-par, he brings nothing new to the story whilst stripping it of its inherent merit and he does nothing worthwhile with Price. Still, everyone has their off-days and the one consolation is that he obviously sat down and actually thought about his later offerings rather than coasting along on making movies-by-numbers.