Pit and the Pendulum

Corman at his intoxicating best, drawing a seductive mesh of sexual motifs from Poe's story through a fine Richard Matheson script. Vincent Price is superbly tormented as the 16th century Spanish nobleman obsessed by the fear that his wife was entombed alive in his castle's torture chamber, a repetition of family history that entails his takeover by the personality of his dead father, the Inquisitor who built the fiendish dungeon. And Barbara Steele, as the faithless wife who faked her own death, embodies all the contradictions of Poe's quintessential female to perfection.