Spain. 1492. The Inquisition under Torquemada (Lance Henriksen) is in full swing. During the auto-de-fe, Maria (Rona De Ricci), aghast at the cruelty on display, begs for the violence to stop when a child is whipped. Entranced with her beauty, Torquemada orders her arrested as a witch. She's taken to the castle dungeon for torture while her husband Antonio (Jonathan Fuller), a baker and former soldier, tries to rescue her.
Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, but viewers of The Pit and the Pendulum can expect a cavalcade of atrocities: the iron maiden, the rack, floggings, burnings at the stake, a tongue is cut out, and Torquemada wears a spiked corset with the spikes pointed inward. It's as bloody and ghastly as you'd expect a movie about the Inquisition to be.
Torquemada is a sick, evil man who devoutly believes he is doing God's will, going so far as to defy the Pope. He hangs a sword by a thread over his bed, so God may strike him down if he displeases Him.
He rages, he whispers, he commands.
Confused by his lust for Maria, Torquemada is convinced she's bewitched him. After she's arrested, she is stripped naked, so she can be examined for the Devil's Mark. His underlings welcome the opportunity to ogle her body and lay their lecherous hands on her, but he castigates them for not taking the work seriously. In his most perverse moment, he dresses her up as the Virgin Mary and tries to have sex with her.
Torquemada is an intense, devout zealot, but his underlings are not cut from the same cloth. They make sardonic wisecracks and enjoy inflicting pain on others. One character loses a tongue, and Francisco (Jeffrey Combs), Torquemada's record keeper, denies the accusation his men did it.
“How can they confess if they don't have tongues?”
Esmerelda (Frances Bay), an accused witch, offers to confess before being waterboarded, but Francisco says they can't accept her confession because she's likely only offering it to avoid being tortured; that confessions under torture are usually made to stop the torture is a point these Inquisition folks never considered.
The dark humor goes beyond the dialogue. In the opening scene, Torquemada declares a dead count a heretic and orders his family's property confiscated by the Church and that he receive twenty lashes. The dead man is a dusty skeleton, and in tying him up for the lashings, the torturers accidentally pull his arm off. When the man with the cat o' nine tails gets a little too carried away, he is scolded for exceeding twenty.
Yes, we'll steal this man's property, desecrate his body in front of his wife and child, but God forbid we fail to follow procedure.
Casual cruelty in the name of God is frightening. This is a movie about mob rule, sexual repression, and religious tyranny, and there's some true horror on display - how human beings treat each other and how they rationalize it.
Gordon gets a good mileage out of the authentic Italian locations, and the costumes are well done, but I would have liked more gloom and shadow. Poe's tales work on dread, darkness, and the Gothic. Gordon's movie is brightly lit with atrocities out in the open, which fits the casual approach to violence these characters have, but I would have liked more atmosphere.
Disappointingly, the climactic unveiling of the titular pit and pendulum is a letdown. It happens too quickly, the resolution feels like a cheat, and the poor soul staring up at the blade never seems to be in the frame with it at the same time.
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