The Pit and the Pendulum

The second of Corman’s Poe cycle, still written by Richard Matheson, The Pit and the Pendulum takes a two page short story and comes up with a macabre tale of murder to pad the runtime. Hey, I’m not complaining. It works quite well. It’s obvious that Corman hit some kind of gold mine when he managed to wrangle Matheson into working for him. Matheson brings a sense of focused narrative that allows for spare plots but strong characterization in order to bring out the eerie tone that Corman was...