Kicking off this year’s 31 Days of Gore is Stuart Gordon’s The Pit and the Pendulum, produced for Full Moon. Lance Henriksen plays the friar Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. I’m a little confused what Henriksen is going for here (certainly not historical accuracy). I get the feeling he wanted to create an intimidating impression of the torturer while Gordon pushed for a jovial atmosphere. The performance doesn’t really fit in Gordon’s universe, which is surprising because Henriksen is often the best part of films like this.
Gordon regulars stand out as Torquemada’s evil but gleefully stupid henchmen: Jeffrey “I gave him life!” Combs is the trusted scribe; Fortress’s Tom Towles portrays the chief enforcer; and Stephen Lee of Dolls fame plays the oaf who carts bodies out of the castle. One of the more interesting henchmen is Mendoza, played by Breaking Bad’s Mark Margolis. Unlike Henriksen, Margolis successfully finds a tone of seriousness that somehow works in the otherwise goofy picture. Unlike his peers, who only use religion as a loophole for torturin’, Mendoza is truly loyal to Torquemada’s plight to cleanse the earth of sinners. This despite the fact that Torquemada wrongfully accused Mendoza of crimes in the past, the punishment for which resulted in the partially healed stigmata bored through each of his hands.
Two young bread-makers, Antonio and Maria, are imprisoned when Torquemada accuses them of witchcraft. As is often the case in films like this, the woman whose beauty tempts self-righteous authority figures gets locked in the dungeon. Antonio makes a couple of impotent attempts to rescue her, only to find himself locked in another section of the dungeon, awaiting execution. Meanwhile, Maria meets an old hag played by horror’s favorite elder woman, Frances Bay. As it turns out, Bay’s character really is a witch who teaches Maria a few tricks, including astral projection, so that she can leave her body whenever the torture becomes too painful.
Oliver Reed adds weight as the cardinal who has been sent, on the pope’s orders, to bring Torquemada back to Rome. Torquemada refuses, choosing instead to seal the emissary in a void behind a wall. (It just occurred to me that Reed’s character should be alive at the end of the movie, after the bad guys are defeated, but none of the good guys think to release him. Oh well.) Although he ruthlessly projects authority, the cracks in Torquemada’s facade are spreading. He’s losing influence and he knows it. He invests too much energy in the titular pendulum which is saved—and underutilized—for the final act.
Producer Charles Band, the Roger Corman of the videocassette market, always struck me as someone who strove for consistency in his films by aiming at an easily achievable mark of quality. It was directors like Gordon who frequently raised the bar, but this isn’t Gordon’s best. In a 90s interview for Fangoria Magazine, Bruce Campbell lamented that the medieval setting in Army of Darkness stifled the improvisational creativity he and Sam Raimi enjoyed on earlier films; remote location shoots create restrictive schedules which don’t leave a lot of room for horsing around. I posit the same may have happened to Gordon here.
The film has an identity crisis, failing to gel its heavier elements (rape, torture, persecution) with its substandard swashbuckling and genuinely funny lines. At one point Combs says to the hag, “I’m sorry you couldn’t confess before we had to kill you.” To which she replies, “Oh, that’s quite alright.” That’s the playful Gordon we all know and love, but those moments are few and far between. If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you already know I would have preferred a funny horror film to a serious one, especially with this cast.
The Pit and the Pendulum is still a good time. More like a Dagon than a Re-Animator, I would rate it 2-1/2 Castle Freaks out of 4. I would have a hard time recommending it to casual moviegoers and I suspect those who would enjoy it half as much as I did have already seen it. I was late to the party on this one, but I’m glad I saw it. I’ll see much worse over the course of the next thirty days.
