Pete Wright: I'm Pete Wright.
Andy Nelson: And I'm Andy Nelson.
Pete Wright: Welcome to the next reel. When the movie ends
Andy Nelson: Our conversation begins.
Pete Wright: Pitt and the pendulum is over. Elizabeth was quite dead. I'd stake my reputation on it.
Trailer: This was my father's world, mister Barnett. The shrieking of mutilated victims became the music of his life. The blood of a thousand men and women was spilled within these walls. Limbs twisted and broken, flesh burned black.
Trailer: Starring Vincent Price, truly a master of the macabre. John Carr, in a challenging role. Barbara Steele, more blood chilling than in Black Sunday. And introducing, taunting Luana Anders. Nicolas.
Elizabeth.
Trailer: Is that you, Elizabeth? While we were up here mourning her, she was alive,
Trailer: struggling to be free.
Trailer: You are lying, sir. When Maria screamed, where were you? You lie. I'm going to torture you, Isabelle. I'm going to make you suffer for your faithlessness to me.
Trailer: You hate it. All the violence of angry seas, the unseen forces of the unknown, the unforgettable memories of a long forgotten childhood. All these you will feel in your very blood.
Trailer: Do you know where you are, Bartolome? You are about to enter hell.
Pete Wright: Can I tell you my first quibble with this movie, Andy?
Andy Nelson: Yes, please.
Pete Wright: Do you know what it is? I've already dropped a brown m and m for you.
Andy Nelson: Oh, I know what it is. And I do you want me to say?
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Andy Nelson: It's the fact that all the marketing has the pit and the pendulum, but what the movie starts is just pit and the pendulum.
Pete Wright: It's even I'd screenshotted that so that I could litigate that with you. And then I went even the trailer. I'm on the IMDb page, and I paused the trailer, and it's called Edgar Allan Poe's pit and the pendulum next to the poster that says the pit and the pendulum. Who is doing this in 1961? Why would you leave that splinter in my brain?
Andy Nelson: I had a film professor back in college who had decided on his own that the way that the film's title should always end up living ever like, once the film is made is how it appears in the film itself.
Pete Wright: Yes.
Andy Nelson: And so that is his definitive version. Now, he took it a little far, like Gone With the Wind, he said, it's written in all capitals every time you write it because that's how they write it in the film. That was a little bit
Trailer: of Okay.
Andy Nelson: Too much of a stretch for me. Like, I can see I can see what he's going for there, but, you know, but, you know, you see something like seven. Yeah. They kind of went with the numeral seven in that everywhere. But this And
Pete Wright: so do we.
Andy Nelson: Yeah. But this, like, it's based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Pit and the Pendulum.
Pete Wright: The Pit and the Pendulum.
Andy Nelson: But the title on the film is Pit and the Pendulum, which makes you think that it's somebody named Pit, and he's playing with his new pendulum that he got for Christmas.
Pete Wright: Dog is named Pendulum. It's a Tom Hanks story. I so that's we're already starting off on the wrong foot with this movie, nineteen sixty one's Pit and the Pendulum.
Andy Nelson: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah.
So okay. Well but okay. Before we jump into this, let's talk about because we're again, this is part of our season long discussion about Roger Corman projects, whether it's something he directed, produced, wrote, directed, and produced, executive produced, whatever. This is part of this ongoing series. Members are voting for these.
This was, you know, we decided since Edgar Allan Poe's birthday is in January, we would use this month to celebrate with one of his, one of Corman's eight adaptations, and the members voted on this one, The Pit and the Pendulum. So let's start by talking about our experience with Edgar Allan Poe, and then we can talk about this particular story, and then we'll jump into the film. So is Poe somebody that you have enjoyed in your life? Where like, where do you stand with with the old poster?
Pete Wright: With Poe? Where do I stand with the poster? Oh, god. If he could be on our filmmaker shirt. I stood with big Poe for a while in high school.
Like, I read a bunch of Poe in high school, and I didn't really go beyond that. I'm not I'm far from a Poe scholar, but but I I remember snippets. I flipped through the story, but very short story, in my compendium of Poe that's dusty on the old shelf here. And so I I I was able to kind of refresh myself on what the original story was about, and I have read a lot of other stuff. I like Poe.
I like allusions to Poe. I think Poe is useful in conversation because his stories make for great metaphor for other modern topics. I don't, I I don't read po every year. I'm not one of those posters.
Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. When I was in seventh grade, our English teacher everyone had to pick a poem and memorize it and then recite it in front of the class. And everyone is picking things like Shell Silverstein or, you know, I I picked the road less traveled by, like those sorts of simple sorts of things. I said, I'm gonna do the raven.
And so I tackled that. I memorized the entire thing and I still, to this day, like have huge chunks of it memorized. Like, I can still tackle that with, you know, some skill. I'm I'm not as it's one that I have to review to actually get the full thing going again, but it's it's still there. I still have Yeah.
Still have it floating around.
Pete Wright: I'd like to see that someday.
Andy Nelson: Maybe I'll show you. But anyway, so from that, I just I really fell in love with the way that he told stories and and, you know, in some other classes, we would read different short stories of his. And so I I had familiar familiarity with him. But like you, it largely tapered off after junior high high school, and I just I never really kind of pursued it beyond that. I enjoy Poe stories when they come up, and it's interesting to take on films like this that really take liberties with what I mean, post short story, especially for this one.
You know, it's not really something that you can make a full feature film with, like The Raven. Yeah. That's hard to take a do that. And so I enjoy his stories, but I've I've not looked at many things that have been, adaptations or inspirations for things just because I know that, well, largely, you're probably not doing much with the actual story. And that's kind of where I am with Poe.
Like, I'm familiar with some of his works. It's been a while, and I've seen very few things that call themselves adaptations.
Pete Wright: You know what'll make you really wanna go back to the source material is watching this movie.
Andy Nelson: Well, you say that as if you didn't have fun. So this will be a good conversation because I'm curious where you land with this one once we get into it.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Andy Nelson: Dear cinephile, allow me to beckon you into a world where the love of film is a haunting mistress, a realm that implores you to join our impassioned community and embark upon a journey most macabre. What you have just witnessed is but a spectral glimpse into our descent into Roger Corman's Gothic Labyrinth, The Pit and the Pendulum. Yet, this is merely the first step in the catacombs of cinematic wonders that await you as a member of our film obsessed brotherhood. By venturing to truestory.fm slash join, you shall unlock the rusted gates to a mausoleum of celluloid delights across all of our beloved podcasts. The next reel, the film board, sitting in the dark, movies we like, and CinemaScope.
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