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Making of 'Pit and the Pendulum'

posted 18 years ago by lasermagnetic
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The below was published in the October 1961 edition of American Cinematographer Magazine:
"The Pit and the Pendulum" ... A Study In Horror Film Photography by Herb A. Lightman.
"The Pit and the Pendulum" produced by American-International Pictures, proves that a big picture can be made on a modest budget - especially when it is carefully planned and the creative talents involved are given unlimited oppportunity to create.
Based on the famous Edgar Allen Poe horror classic, the film is lavishly mounted and imaginatively photographed by Floyd Crosby, ASC. Except for a prologue consisting of exteriors, the story's action takes place entirely within the forbidding confines of a medieval Spanish castle replete with massive main hall, ornate bedrooms, secret passages, dungeons, tombs, torture rooms and, ofcourse, the formidable "pit" with it's massive stone altar over which is suspended the swinging pendulum blade used to torture and sometimes slice up hapless victims placed beneath it.
Except for the absence of big name stars in the cast, the film boasts production values comparable to pictures costing five times as much.
"We achieved what we did on a low budget because we carefully planned the whole production in advance of starting the cameras," Director-Producer Corman explains. "Thus, when we moved into the studio for fifteen days of scheduled shooting, we didn't have to start making decisions. Because of our pre-production conferences with Director of Photography Floyd Crosby and Art Director Daniel Haller, everyone knew exactly what to do, barring any last minute inspirations on the set.

HOW REHEARSALS PAID OFF
"Previously, I had painstakingly rehearsed the actors so there was complete understanding as to what each was to accomplish in each scene. This is most important; there is nothing worse than to be on the set and ready to roll, only to find that director and actor have different views as to how the scene is to be done. Thanks to pre-production planning and rehearsals, there was no time wasted on the set in haggling and making decisions.
"In our set design, choice of costumes, and in matters related to the atmosphere of the period of the story, we aimed to be as authentic as possible, without becoming slaves to authenticity. Flexibility keynoted the whole operation so that whenever we believed it expedient, we would heighten certain dramatic and shock effects. Here, Floyd Crosby contributed some outstanding lighting and camera work to enhance the illusion of realism - which, perhaps, was not so much realism but a suspension of disbelief."
Much of the film's effectiveness as a thriller is due it's pictorial scope borne of the production desighn of Art Director Daniel Haller. Having worked previously with Corman and Crosby on several pictures, he was very much part of the production team that created "Pit And The Pendulum."
"We wanted a set having many levels and and ample space to afford the utmost freedom to the camera," Heller explains. "Four or five rooms were erected on the stage so they were interconnecting, and we used wide archways and stairways without balustrades. Thus the camera could move freely through the entire series of rooms for sustained takes, if necessary. Massiveness keynoted the design and construction of all sets so that the players would be dwarfed against the vast walls, and in the massive archways, etc."
Haller's forbidding split-level castle, with it's many rooms, passageways and catacombs occupied four sound stages at the California Studios in Hollywood. Had it been necessary to build the sets from scratch, cost of construction alone would have greatly exceeded the picture's budget.
After Heller drew up the floor plans and made key sketches that visualized how the sets were to look, he next scouted the back lots and prop lofts of the major studios in search of available set units that could be rented and put together to form the sets he had conceived for "Pit And The Pendulum."

LIKE A GIANT JIGSAW PUZZLE
At Universal-International Studio, massive archways, fireplaces, windows and doorways, and several torture machine props - all from dismantled sets of long forgotten Universal productions - were available. At other studios, soaring stairways and huge stone wall units were located. From this fund of second-hand set pieces, Haller selected what he needed and had them delivered to California Studios. Here the various bits and pieces were fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, following his floor plans. Though the period of the story was Spanish 15th Century, often a French or German gothic window was used instead of one of Spanish design because it lent the desired dramatic or pictorial effect. After the rented set pieces had been erected, studio technicians filled in the spaces with appropriate construction to unify the whole. The only set in the picture built in the conventional manner was the dungeon set.
The spectacular pendulum set occupied a whole sound stage and stretched from the floor to the rafters. To heighten the massive aspect of this set, the camera was mounted on a parallel at the opposite end of the stage and a 40mm Panavision wide-angle lens used. This enabled Crosby to frame the scene in his camera with extra space allowed at the bottom and at either side. These area were then filled in later by printing-in process extensions of the set, doubling it's size on the screen.
Other matte shots, following Haller's original paintings, were used to establish exteriors of the castle. Scenes of waves dashing against cliffs were filmed on the Palos Verdes coast southwest of Hollywood. The camera was locked down tightly for steadiness and the cameraman who was to shoot the matte paintings went along to make sure the perspectives would match.
Photographically, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a singular achievement in color mood lighting and the use of the moving camera. To Floyd Crosby, who won an oscar for his photography of "Tabu" back in 1931, the challenge was one of reaching for top quality under difficult conditions and on a short shooting schedule. Moreover, the entire picture, with the exception of the exterior opening sequence, required low-key photography, since everything that took place within the castle was in a somber mood. The first half of the action called for medium low-key, while the final half went to extreme low-key with nothing in between for relief.
The climactic action of the story is concerned mostly with one actor wandering through secret passages and catacombs, lured by the voice of his wife who is supposedly dead. Most of the low-key effect was achieved in the lighting of the set. A reasonable amount of front light had to be used on the actor's face, although occasionally it was possible to use just a linelight and very little fill. In medium-key sequences, Crosby said, faces were underexposed two-thirds of a stop and the background about a stop-and-a-half. For most extreme low-key shots faces were underexposed a stop-and-a-half. Illumination on the background was lowered to a point somewhere between 15 and 20 foot-candles where it would just hardly record on the film.
An important decision made prior to shooting was whether or not to use a flicker effect in the many scenes supposedly illuminated by torch light. Such effects are usually created by placing a fire pan in front of the source light. Crosby knew that if he once introduced the flicker effect he would have to retain it throughout the film. With so very much camera movement and so little time to shoot, he decided to dispense with the effect rather than run the risk of it being inconsistent. In the intricate follow shots his aim was to keep the source light coming from the direction of the torches. There was a great deal of camera movement, most of it done with the aid of a large Chapman boom, with the action often continuing through four or five rooms without a cut. This meant that huge areas of the set had to be precisely lighted at one time.
"The sets were exceptionally well designed," Crosby observes, "and lent themselves very well to low-key photography. It still amazes me how much set we were able to get on so low a budget. We had some huge sets and, ofcourse, the bigger the set the more lights that have to be rigged, all of which takes time. Sometimes we would get all set to shoot and then get a better idea. In the 'pendulum' sequence, for example, we originally rigged the lights high up on the stage, but when we were ready to shoot we realized that making the shadow of the pendulum cut across the figures in the background would be most effective. We had to stop and re-set the lights at a lower angle so the dramatic shadow would not be lost in the depths of the set."
Crosby displayed a bit of camera magic, born of long years of experience, in shooting the opening exterior prologue - a sequence set at the seashore supposedly against a glowing sky. The day which the company chose for the location, however, had anything but the right mood - bright and sunny with a beautiful blue sky. By using a pola-screen on the lens to darken the sky plus underexposure. Crosby produced the ominous mood called for in the script.
Extremely effective in the film is a series of flashbacks in which the main character, teetering on the edge of insanity, relives traumatic experiences from his tortured past. Realizing that flashbacks can be deadly if they are not well-executed, Corman, Heller and Crosby put their heads together to devise a unique effect that would subjectively convey the character's horror in dredging up the nightmares lurking in his sub-conscious. They wanted these flashbacks to have a strangeness, a semi-dream quality - twisted and distorted because they were being experienced by someone on the rim of madness who did not know the full facts or was too shocked to recall them accurately. In order to provide a definite visual demarcation between the story of the moment (reality) and what had happened in the past, it was decided to shoot the main story in full color and the flashbacks in monochrome since as many psychiatrists maintain, most people dream in "black-and white."
The flashbacks were accordingly filmed in monochrome and Crosby utilised wide-angle lenses, violent camera movement and tilted camera angles to point up the character's feeling of hysteria. The finished sequences were printed on blue-tinted stock which was then toned red during development - producing the effect of a two-tone image. The highlights went blue - while the shadows (represented by areas where more emulsion was present) held the dye and were rendered as red, producing a realistic bloody quality. To further enhance the atmosphere of horror, the image was then run through an optical printer where the edges were vignetted and a twisted linear distortion was introduced. The result on the screen is one of genuine shock, an almost too-real-to bear nightmare quality starkly suggesting madness and bloody violence. Like the rest of the picture, the flashback sequences reflect thought, careful planning and imagination.

[–] FrankensteinsDaughter 18 years ago

Wow! Thanks for posting this. It was an interesting read. Roger Corman's Poe adaptations are some of my favorite horror movies. When you look at the the high quality Corman and crew pulled off with such little money it's just plain inspirational.

[–] lasermagnetic 16 years ago

Making of "Pit & the Pendulum" contd. (from AIP's 1961 pressbook)

American International's "The Pit & the Pendulum" which opens at the.............Theater on................, brings to the screen Edgar Allan Poe's most famous terror classic which proudly takes it's place beside that studio's previous Poe tale, "The House of Usher."
One of Poe's greatest gifts was his ability to cast an almost hypnotic spell with his plots and his sumptuous and ornate settings. Living in the 19th century, Poe seemed to feel and write his best in the period of a couple hundred years earlier. In "The Pit and the Pendulum", the Poe mood and atmosphere has been authentically recreated and the effect is one of the screen's most arresting and chilling stories.

The story is laid in 16th century Spain and the film's sets, trappings, and costumes present that period with all it's ornate beauty and foreboding brought to life in magnificent color. The great main room of the castle set measures 28,000 square feet, with a staircase leading to the upper chambers which can be glimpsed through massive wrought iron doors separating stairs from corridors. Fine old Belgian tapestries of varying sizes adorn the walls, while the Oriental rug on the floor measures 25 by 38 feet, the largest used on any motion picture set. Dominating one wall of the great room is a huge fireplace, the firebox of which is 7 feet by 8 feet.

The dining room which opens out from the main room has a fireplace only slightly smaller and over it is and authentic 16th century Spanish coat-of-arms Trophy. Opening off the great room on another side is the music room and it's double doors dividing the rooms inlaid with thirty-two hand carved figureheads. Bedrooms are equally impressive, each with fireplace. Behind the fireplace in the master bedroom is concealed a sliding panel leading onto a secret corridor --- in true Poeish fashion.

Furnishings in keeping with the architecture include massive tables and high backed chairs of the era. Two 400-year-old intricately carved Throne chairs 8 feet in height stand at each side of the main room's fireplace. Chests and cabinets in various rooms are from Italy and Spain and all are hundreds of years old. Statuary and wall paintings are of the same degree of quality and excellence. Wrought iron chandeliers from old Spain are 150 years old.

POE'S TERRORS REPRODUCED
The pivotal sets in "The Pit and the Pendulum" are the torture chamber and the Pendulum room, which readers of the great Poe classic chiller will recall with a shudder. In there are the inhuman torture paraphernalia of the Spanish Inquisition: iron maidens, spiked doorways, racks, stocks and other "refinements" of that particular period's blight against human nature. The crypts, where where members of the family are interred, line dark, torturous passageways lit by guttering torches along the wall. One breakaway wall in the crypt took six days to construct and was made of solid brick.

PENDULUM SWINGS
The Pendulum room, where some of the most blood-curdling scenes occur, is especially effective. To heighten the sinister qualities implied in the architecture, art director Daniel Haller designed a scenic backdrop with veiled, hooded figures stalking along a cloistered walk beneath trees with dark, evil-looking branches interlocking. The mural measures 40 by 80 feet and the design is carried out in murky blues, mystic greens, muddy blacks, and cold greys.
The swinging pendulum is 18 feet long, with a realistic rubber cutting blade which, when in operation, appears to pierce a man's chest. It weighs over a ton, is rigged from the top of the sound stage and suspended thirty-five feet in the air. It swings lower and lower and lower, inch by inch by inch --- exactly as Poe described it.
Construction supervisor Ross Hahn Jr., who had the responsibility of building the pendulum gears, actually mounted the heavy gears high over the sound stage and controlled the movements of the blade. To the nervous observer, Hahn seemed to have the toughest job on the film during production of these particular scenes.

TALL ORDERS FILLED
Hahn, working from art director Daniel Haller's designs, used 12,000 pounds of plaster in building the sets. Dick Rubin, property master, had 2,000 red candles specially made for the film. Eighty-five torches were specially constructed, and special physical effects supervisor Pat Dinga sprayed over 20 gallons of "cobwebbing" throughout the various sets. Dinga, a past master at "cobwebbing" for eerie effects, made the dark chambers shuddery even in broad daylight. He and his crew also coordinated their efforts closely with Hahn in manipulating the pendulum when it made it's ominous, swinging descent.
A brooding, Edgar Allan Poe atmosphere hangs heavily over all the sets even in the dining, music, and main rooms where settings are warm and comfortable. The mood of the frenetic writer's famed story has been authentically caught and transferred to the screen.

EXCELLENT CAST
With Vincent Price heading the cast and portraying the Spanish nobleman tormented to madness, are stars John Kerr as Francis, who has journeyed from England to unravel the mystery of the death of his sister, played by Barbara Steele. Luana Anders has a sympathetic roll as the sister of the Spaniard who shares his dread secret. Antony Carbone is seen as Dr. Leon, long-time friend of the family, and Patrick Westwood is cast in the role of the butler.
In color and Panavision, with an exciting musical score by Les Baxter, and a Richard Matheson script based on the famous Poe tale, "The Pit and the Pendulum" provides top entertainment and an unforgettable experience of chills and terror.

DANIEL HALLER: YOUNG ART DIRECTOR SPECIALIZES IN ATMOSPHERES OF TERROR
Daniel Haller, Hollywood's youngest art director who is responsible for the realistic air of terror sets in American International's "The Pit and the Pendulum," is acquiring a reputation as specialist it creating film atmospheres of mystery and horror.
In order to bring the greatest amount of "mood" and Edgar Allan Poe atmosphere to the film, Haller worked with producer-director Roger Corman, and writer Richard Matheson when the script was still in rough form in order to be able to co-ordinate ideas with them for maximum dramatic values.
Of particular interest in the film is Haller's Pendulum Room and the mural depicting the Spanish Inquisition which add an ominous foreboding and a special meaning to the key set.
His artistry was an integral part of the resulting spine-tingling terror conveyed to audiences when the black-hooded figure of star Vincent Price menaces victim John Kerr with the doom of the Pendulum in the climactic scene.

MEMORABLE AND UNUSUAL MUSIC IS COMPOSER LES BAXTER'S SPECIALITY
The name Les Baxter on an album or in a motion picture credit always means just one thing: memorable and unusual music.
According to Baxter, moviegoers should not be too aware of the music in a dramatic film.
"If they are," claims Les, "it isn't successful as a score. Although music creates moods, accentuates and heightens exciting values, and underplays where necessary, it should become a part of the story."
"If they pay too much attention to the music, that means the score has not blended into the production as a whole."
Baxter, credited with starting what we term "mood" music, is recognized for his unique approach to motion picture music and his distinctive and unusual scores. For "The Pit and the Pendulum" his memorable musical score conveys all the intensity and drama of the terror classic.