With "The Fall of the House of Usher", American International went into the world of macabre through the Gothic world of Edgar Allan Poe, and continued with perhaps his eeriest story. Some of Poe's stories were so short that to make a movie version out of them meant altering the original tale a great deal, and that meant pretty much adding background and characters not included prior. The horrific "The Pit and the Pendulum" starts off slowly, but like a symphony, gains power as it develops. Vincent Price is a seemly moody, if kindly baron, the son of a man obsessed with torture. As a child, Price witnessed his father kill his own mother and brother by horrific, torturous means, and has desperately tried to destroy that legacy even though the "Dante's Inferno" like torture chamber remains. He broods over the memory of his late wife (Barbara Steele), a darkly beautiful woman who started off as a loving spouse but slowly changed as the secrets of the castle began to take over her spirit.
With his long face and somewhat tired looking eyes, Price was destined to play horrific roles as he got older. Undesputibly the king of horror after starring in "House of Wax", Price found his niche when Roger Corman cast him in the string of "Poe" films. Many of his characters are indistinguishable other than their names and hair color. They all start off as moody rather than obviously evil, but half way through the movie have transformed into a human monster, a bit perverse and possibly sadomasochistic. They are also surrounded by women with ulterior motives, and in this case, the ulterior motive of supposedly deceased wife Steele is to drive her "widowed" husband mad so she can be with her lover and take over the estate herself.
With her dark, steely eyes, Barbara Steele had the look of an evil woman, and nobody could glare with deadly intentions better than her. This was made right after she exploded on the screen in the Italian horror classic "Black Sunday", and while her on-screen time here is limited, she makes the most out of it, whether delightedly kissing her lover right in front of the passed out Price, verbally telling him afterwords of how she plotted this from the beginning, and finally, the delightful punishment she gets which is one of the eeriest film endings since Bela Lugosi got his come-uppance in the original "The Raven". Of course, there's a less fiendish romantic couple here, Steele's brother (John Kerr) and Price's sister (Luana Anders), but they are not nearly as interesting as the evil characters.
American International's horror films dominated the 1960s along with the British Hammer films as the spookiest films since the early days of talkies. They are even more Gothic with the eerie looking color photography than the classics directed by Tod Browning and James Whale, and certainly better than low-budget Universal films which lacked the underlying mystery of the earlier classics and these grand guignol that hold up very well today and have obviously influenced the generation of horror movie directors who came along years after these films were released.
With his long face and somewhat tired looking eyes, Price was destined to play horrific roles as he got older. Undesputibly the king of horror after starring in "House of Wax", Price found his niche when Roger Corman cast him in the string of "Poe" films. Many of his characters are indistinguishable other than their names and hair color. They all start off as moody rather than obviously evil, but half way through the movie have transformed into a human monster, a bit perverse and possibly sadomasochistic. They are also surrounded by women with ulterior motives, and in this case, the ulterior motive of supposedly deceased wife Steele is to drive her "widowed" husband mad so she can be with her lover and take over the estate herself.
With her dark, steely eyes, Barbara Steele had the look of an evil woman, and nobody could glare with deadly intentions better than her. This was made right after she exploded on the screen in the Italian horror classic "Black Sunday", and while her on-screen time here is limited, she makes the most out of it, whether delightedly kissing her lover right in front of the passed out Price, verbally telling him afterwords of how she plotted this from the beginning, and finally, the delightful punishment she gets which is one of the eeriest film endings since Bela Lugosi got his come-uppance in the original "The Raven". Of course, there's a less fiendish romantic couple here, Steele's brother (John Kerr) and Price's sister (Luana Anders), but they are not nearly as interesting as the evil characters.
American International's horror films dominated the 1960s along with the British Hammer films as the spookiest films since the early days of talkies. They are even more Gothic with the eerie looking color photography than the classics directed by Tod Browning and James Whale, and certainly better than low-budget Universal films which lacked the underlying mystery of the earlier classics and these grand guignol that hold up very well today and have obviously influenced the generation of horror movie directors who came along years after these films were released.