THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

Directed by Marc Lougee

Written by Matt Taylor

Review by M.G. Wood

As one of America’s greatest writers, Edgar Allan Poe had the foresight to see that fear of wrongful imprisonment and torture would continue to haunt readers for decades after his demise. Not knowing of course that film-goers would also revel in his paranoia-induced nightmare.

SPOILER WARNING!

In THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, a new stop motion animated short film executively produced by the legendary stop motion artist Ray Harryhausen (THE 7 VOYAGES OF SINBAD, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS), our hero The Narrator (beautifully sculpted to look like Poe) is condemned to death by torture. After being drugged, The Narrator is bound to a board, unable to free himself from the massive ropes, forced to watch an enormous blade swing overhead by a pendulum descending ever closer.

SPOILER WARNING!

Before being introduced to the pendulum, The Narrator considers his fate may lie within the abyss of a deep dark pit, from which he smells the decay of death and hears the echoing wails of sorrow. But, at the last second The Narrator’s sullen eyes are diverted away from the pit to the lone window above, where a desperate red bird struggles to escape through the iron bars. As he focuses on the red bird’s desire to be free, a cup is slid into his cell, our hero quickly takes the cup and gulps it down. Soon our hero finds himself in an altered state and unable to focus, and ultimately lying beneath the deadly pendulum.

As much as we love writer Richard Matheson's adaptation of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM from 1961 starring Vincent Price, the story works better as Poe had intended: a tight, concise, thrilling short.

Pete Cugno as The Narrator gives a measured, breathless reading, perfectly vocalizing the tone and mood of our beleaguered hero; of course with the help of animators Ryan Fairley and Mike Weiss giving Mr. Cugno’s voice a face.

Visual Effects Supervisor Jon Campfens along with animators Fairey and Weiss do a masterful job creating shadows and light, the essential talent in working with Gothic material. In THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, you will see the oppressive darkness of The Narrator’s death cell closing in around him, great flickering candle light, orange flames rolling over and under the molten walls, shadows cast by the lone window above, illuminating our hero’s face as he desperately attempts to free himself before the pendulum extinguishes his life.

At a running time of approximately 7 minutes, Marc Lougee’s THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM engulfs you into an inescapable nightmare of impending doom, leaving you with only two ways out, the pit or the pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe couldn’t have planned it better.

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