The Well and the Pendulum | Movie Review

16th century. Wealthy, the son of a well-known Spanish inquisitor and a hypochondriac, Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) lives in pain and despondency, isolated in his huge manor house, the illness slowly eating away at his beautiful young wife Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). The latter is increasingly stricken by epileptic seizures, which induce her into a state of apparent death: white, cadaverous skin, heartbeat minimized and almost imperceptible, her face transfigured into a worn mask. Having buried her body, following an irreversible seizure, and locked it in a coffin, inside the crypt located in the basement floors of the castle, Nicholas lives in doubt that he has foully and abruptly provided for locking his wife still alive inside the chest... Now prey to ghostly visions (perhaps only the product of his sick mind) and terrified by sounds and noises of (seemingly) irrational origin, Nicholas, slowly and inexorably, moves closer and closer to a state of delusional madness. When Francis (John Kerr), Elizabeth's brother, arrives at the castle to investigate the mysterious death of his sister, by now Nicholas's mental state is totally out of control: he is in fact convinced that he is the reincarnation of the inquisitor. This belief is derived from the discovery of a "torture chamber" and tools the progenitor used to torment his victims. While Nicholas' personality, even physical, is now distorted into that of the inquisitor ancestor, poor Francis will have to deal with a tremendous contraption: "the pit and the pendulum," indeed...

Second film, shot by Roger Corman, of the eight (total) inspired by Poe's famous tales and made in the 1960s. The director fortifies, with this film, his method (later adopted by other filmmakers and renamed, precisely, the "Corman method") by employing excellent collaborators who make up the technical and artistic cast.

Great evidence of screenwriting (by an author, Matheson, often plundered in turn for his stories: most famously by Duel, directed by Spielberg), excellent performances (above all the histrionic Price) and great technical expertise (photography and framing, often lopsided and distorted, to emphasize the psychological state of the character) make this film the best of the cycle. But even outside the Poe-inspired series, as a whole, thanks in part to the setting, set design, and faithful-and verisimilar-reconstruction of costumes, The Well and the Pendulum (aka The Pit and The Pendulum) remains particularly etched in the viewer's memory, increasing in charisma and charm over time. Definitely one of the best horror films of the decade (1960), not to say ever, in the history of horror cinema.