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Episode 474 - The Pit and the Pendulum (Patreon)

Published:
2019-11-08 03:48:41
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

We're kicking off POEVEMBER with Mr. EAP's classic The Pit and the Pendulum!

Check out A Potted History of Cthulhu Games from Auroch Digital - an episode of the How to Make a Game podcast!

Special thanks to our fantabulous reader - Eric Curtis Johnson!

Next up: Metzengerstein 

Comments

Anonymous

Y'know, the strapado torture Chad mentioned at the end there actually reminds me of Matewan. There's that one scene where the protagonist explains why he's a pascifist--how he went to prison for refusing to participate in the Great War, and there were Mennonites there for the same reason. Aside from not being able to fight, their faith also required them to not shave their beards, wear buttons, etc.--all of which violated the prison dress code. The guards took to stringing them up on the bars with handcuffs for most of the day, wrists clamped just high enough they had to tiptoe to keep the cuffs from cutting into them. The results were...not pretty. But they refused to yield. Anyway, that's my random thought for the night.

Anonymous

(SIGH) Ohh, I suppose it's Poevember again! Aside from the title and the spectacular Harry Clarke illustrations, I never really cared for this story. It's the Victorian equivalent of the Saw films; in fact, one of those implemented the pendulum as an execution device. Also, if this episode inspires anyone else to do an image search for "strappado," be ready for less medieval torture and more... well, I don't entirely regret it. I hope you fine fellows cover King Pest at some point. It's easily the most bizarre Poe story I've read.

Anonymous

Nobody expects ... such an elaborate Python reference that did not result in giggles

Anonymous

An auto-da-fé? What's an auto-da-fé? (It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway)

Anonymous

Yeeeeza. Been a long long time since I cracked this one. I had somehow concocted a half-remembered story along the lines of Most Dangerous Game. To come to the realization half-way through that no story at all would be forthcoming . . . well . . . let's call it disappointing. Even Poe's excellent language couldn't save this one from the comfy chair of despair.

Anonymous

Chris: He takes that meat and he rubs it. He rubs it on that strap. Chad: Mmhmm.

Steve
>>28753393

It's a lovely day for drinking And for watching people fry!

Anonymous
>>28756354

Chris: "You have no real external stimulation besides touching a hard surface..." Once again Chris and Chad remind everyone that HP stands for Homoerotic Podcast! :D

Jeff C. Carter

Fantastic reading by Eric Curtis Johnson! BTW, I saw the film version with Lance Henriksen. He was a terrifying villain, and they added a backstory about the guy in the pit trying to get out and save his wife. I remember liking it (when I was 12).

Anonymous

I thought it was interesting that the pendulum was set up to slice his heart. In all the movies I have seen with a pendulum it cuts through the stomach to eviscerate the victim. The fictional Inquisitors in this story were actually nicer than their later copycats, because they at least made the eventual death a quick one.

Anonymous

Do not expect much in the way of Poe if you're going to watch Corman's "The Raven". It's an entertaining comedy loosely draped around the poem for maybe the first ten minutes.

Anonymous

Was I the only one hoping our guy Lying Vincent Price was going to show up this episode? Because of the film connection. Oh well, we've got all the rest of Poe-vember. The first time I read Poe as a kid this story confused me so much, because I could not understand why the torture was happening. My young mind could grasp the revenge motifs of many of Poe's other stories, but this seemed so senseless I thought I was missing something.

Steve

I think this works as a study in terror, and possibly prefigures Kafka's more involved studies of absurdity such as Metamorphosis and the Castle, and even later writers such as Aickman. The Man in the Crowd goes to similar places without also ever becoming explicitly absurdist or haunting.

Anonymous
>>28776346

I am always hoping that Lying Vincent Price will show up in every episode...

Anonymous
>>28764984

I dunno, I assume it would take some time to saw through the breastbone...

Anonymous

Ok also I may be being a bit obtuse and missing an ironic bit but, Chad, have you really not read 1984?

Anonymous

For me, the great value of this story is aesthetic. For a writer from the 1840's, Poe's "set design" is extremely prescient. As with Masque of the Red Death, the set, with its luridly sculpted walls and the statue of the Grim Reaper holding a mechanical pendulum, we are presented with a scene that could be from a modern video game or metal album cover. He imagined all of this in the first half of the 19th century. I am always impressed with his ability to weave dark fantasy that wouldn't exist commonly for more than a century after his death. I'm also not surprised at how his critic described Poe as "vulgar". Imagery with this level of morbidity was, until relatively recently, nearly as taboo as eroticism. His stories went nearly as far into darkness and madness as anything Hitchcock or Black Sabbath would do in the 20th century, both of whom were considered shocking more than 100 years later.

Anonymous

I'm a bit surprised that you haven’t seen the Lance Henriksen adaptation of this story, as it’s directed by your buddy Stuart Gordon. I thought it was a bit too po-faced for a movie by the Re-Animator guys but it has its moments. The Corman version is worth a look for a variety of reasons: it’s the only movie to feature both Vincent Price and Euro-horror Queen Barbara Steele, the script by Richard Matheson expands on the story nicely, the realisation of the pendulum is cool, and the very end of the movie is a great shock reveal.

Anonymous

Like most of Corman's adaptations of Poe, the 1961 version of "The Pit and the Pendulum" expands the story by importing themes and motifs from other works by E.A.P., in this case a family with a dark past and a haunting by a beloved and beautiful dead (or is she?!?) woman. It also simplifies the torture by omitting the heatable and moveable walls. My favorite moment in the film is a scene that has no analogue in the source story, where Barbara Steele, taunting Vincent Price, laughs, and then he STARTS laughing and she STOPS laughing, realizing that she has committed a grave miscalculation.

Anonymous

I’ve always loved Poe, but I never got this story. EAP pooped his pants on this one. Makes no sense why the tormentors would put so much effort into plaguing one guy. Overdone and silly. Especially the rescue. But I loved the episode, lol. You guys are really good with the stories that don’t necessarily work.

Anonymous

Pits, Pendulums, and Poe - Perfectly prosed!

Anonymous

Go ahead & hit that “SWOOZE” button! You need the sleep!

Anonymous

Sure the Spanish Inquisition came up with some pretty gruesome torture techniques, but did they ever bury someone alive? ... I mean, of course they did, probably. That’s probably what drew EAP to them in the first place for this story.

Anonymous

Chad, I’m afraid you made a pretty basic historical mistake. While it’s true that salty foods entered the scene early in the evolution of Happy Hour, the very first Happy Hours featured free drinks if you could successfully fight off rats for 60 minutes. The big problem, of course, was a real slump in repeat business (along with a general feeling that it wasn’t very happy).

Anonymous

I LOVE this story! One of my all time favorite classics. It is visceral and in the moment in such a heightened way, which really no one has ever done as well as Poe. I guess a thing also to keep in mind, for people who don't like this kind of horror, is how innovative it was. The techniques Poe uses here are commonplace now, but Poe invented and pioneered them in this story. There is good reason to believe this is the first work of pure horror-- not gothic horror, or any other sub-genre where horror is an additional effect, but a work focused purely on horrifying. Do the Inquisitors and their convoluted (and probably extremely expensive) devices of torture make sense? No, not in a realistic slice of life (slice!) kind of a way. But I always found them to be more like demons presiding over a hellish laboratory, like the Cenobites of Hellraiser, than actual historical people. Maybe I got this idea because when I first read it as a tot I had no idea what the inquisition was and just assumed it was another diabolical invention of Poe's. I think there is plenty of evidence in the text that this scenario is not exactly our reality though. As intensely realistic as it is moment to moment, I don't think that has to be matched with realism in the plot. Beyond its main torture horror (I don't like the term "torture porn," I think it's usually unfairly used) aspects, though, it has really resonant symbolic meaning for me. The austere isolation in an grotesque metal prison with only one's inner monologue as a companion, and death swinging down closer inch by inch, like a huge Sword of Damocles, is all very existential, reflective of our human fate under this strange penal sentence of time.

Anonymous

I’ve seen documentaries that suggest the Spanish Inquisition was as bad as portrayed and that there prisons were better than the se liar ones not great but better also the final findings of the SI actually stated that there was no evidence of the existence of witchcraft. Running on memory here - anyone else corroborate this.

Mark Brett

If I remember my college history classes correctly, the nastiness of the Inquisition depended greatly on location and era. It was never safe to be Jewish around it, mind you, and that marks it as pretty awful in general. But the darkest parts of its reputation were probably concocted as part of a smear campaign from rival governments.

Anonymous

His first two drafts, "The Prince and the Pendulum" and "The Pit and the Pauper" really didn't work.

Kit Ainslie

I have fond memories of an audiobook version of this story. I didn’t realize at the time but the audio production shortened the story, having it end as the man fails to escape from his bonds and is sliced in two. While a much simpler version, the chilling process of a man desperately waiting for the rats to chew his bonds, trying to hold off until the last minute to not scare them away, and then failing as the blade sliced his torso was riveting and I distinctly remember it still. In the original by the time the third murder attempt sets in I’m already primed looking for how he will escape it, and it loses all its dramatic tension for me. This story seems like a case where less is more.

Anonymous

The Inquisition throughout this story feel like they're composed of James Bond villains. I first read this shortly after watching Goldfinger for the first time, and I kept expecting someone to pop into the narrator and saying "No Señor Bond, I expect you to die!" Which for some reason never happened, though it would have vastly improved the story