Bonus 19 - Corman's Pit and the Pendulum

I think this is the weakest Corman Poe movie I think House of Usher and Red Death are the best particularly Red Death which is the masterpiece of the series. This one is okay but it's definitely slow going in comparison to the others.

Dunno If this has ever been brought up but the animated movie Extraordinary Tales has a pretty good take on the Pit and the Pendulum. Plus Christopher Lee is in it and the Hypnotist looks like Mr. Price.

The opening for The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Keep in mind, this was long before Thriller: https://youtu.be/BsaFDZfz8Lc

Tara Murphy

You talk about hoe Vincent was so ubiquitous that you can't remember the first time you saw him. I remember! He would read creepy poetry in interstitials for the children's show The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. It was filmed in Ontario and starred the late and amazing Billy Van as The Count, Griselda, Wolfman, the Pet Vet, etc., etc. Prosthetics were made by Dick Smith. If you picture children's programming made by Hammer, you would be very close. This show altered my DNA and made me into the weirdo I am today. I think most of it is on youtube, so do yourselves a favour and check it out. Griselda is my fave. I also firmly believed that Wolfman Jack was a real werewolf for far too long because of HHoF.

Tara Murphy

I started listening to this and suddenly realized I had PVR'd the film (among many other horror classics) from TCM during October. So I went and watched it before returning to the podcast. Favourite bit: Vincent Price going face first into giant webs and just ignoring them as he searches dreamily for his dead wife. I just love all his choices.

Tara Murphy

The Pit and the Pendulum is probably my least-favorite of the Corman/Price Poe adaptations, so I can understand you guys not enjoying it. But I never found those films boring. Price alone generally makes them worth watching for me, and all of them are very pretty, as well. I guess I'd classify them as "flawed but fascinating."

Mark Brett

Luana Anders was an interesting actor. She went through the Actor’s Studio with people like Jack Nicholson and Sally Kellerman. That’s where she first met Corman, who did acting classes there to try and improve his direction of actors and who ended up casting a number of his classmates. She was always interesting; her career never really took off but she has small roles in a lot of Nicholson’s movies.

Pearce Duncan

Never forget when Vincent Price helped to save Smooth Music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYaTqP4X68

Clint Page

So great to hear Lying Vincent Price finally make a comback! He should run for President.

Vincent's voice at the beginning bewildered me because I thought it was Bruce Green at first.

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was superior to Thundercats! Not to mention Ulysses 31, but this is distinctly off topic.

Glad you guys called out Les Baxter; I got turned onto him a couple years back. I suggest his cover of Rachmaninoff's (sp?) Prelude C Sharp Minor. It's fantastic. I think it would go great in a vampire movie.

Rachel was probably too busy with Dangermouse and Thundercats.

Steve

Just for the record, British TV in the eighties was crap, I know I grew up with it, Cushing, Lee and Price’s movies were on BBC and ITV pretty regularly as they were cheap. In actual fact Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes movies were on early evening even more regularly and all the old American Westerns of John Wayne and Randolph Scott etc saw plenty of screen time.

Oh Mystery Incorporated is probably the best animated TV show ever. Even beats TAS.

Steve

But probably not in the 80s, except for in Thriller.

Steve

So..... what I'm getting from this episode is that it's actually NOT that common to have a family torture chamber under the house? Is that true? I mean of course it's not common. I was just testing you. There's times when you guys talk about a movie and it sounds awesome and I plan to go watch it or watch it again. But I'm actually most grateful for the times when you guys talk about a movie (often a famous one), and I decide that I'll skip it after all. I feel like you watched this so I wouldn't have to. Come to think of it, I love Vincent Price, but I don't think I've seen many movies he was in. Mostly I remember him from appearances he did on Sesame Street and other children's programming. I've been a horror fan since an early age and I recognized him as a kindred spirit. This has been an excellent Poevember.

Lots of bad movies have good casts. But you're right - the lead actor's incredibly shitty acting is probably due to me playing Pac-Man when I was a kid. And Matheson's script is meandering and repetitive because I like girls.

So thrilled for Vincent Price (Lyin’ and otherwise) returning to the podcast! I’m also going to abandon a shred of my dignity here and admit that I first became a real fan when he was the voice of Vincent van Ghoul in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo cartoon show. Watching The Haunted Palace on Halloween every year is much to be preferred.

Jennifer DeFord

i was also astonished to find out that my wife (also european) had no idea who Vincent Price is. It came up when Lyin Vincent Price first joined the podcast a few episodes ago and we were listening together. I tried to show her clips thinking she just didnt recognize his name, still nothing. so disappointing 😢

Emma & Brian

Lying Vincent Price always reminds me of Bill Hader's SNL skits for Vincent Price holiday specials.

Doug McCool

You gotta put Peter Cushing in there. Love all three.

Doug McCool

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how-to-brine-a-turkey-by-hp-lovecraft

Emma & Brian

Straight boys raised on video games! Its a crying shame! Fellas - St. Vincent & Barbara Steele! And you find it boring?!! Makes me wanna reach for a cask of Amontillado!

Robert R. Conroy

You guys CAN BE SAVAGELY PROSAIC!!!! Really guys!

Robert R. Conroy

I mean, he *did* play Joseph Curwen.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Robot Jox! That movie does not get the love it deserves.

The Screaming Moist

I had, naturally, always assumed that one of you, my fine boon companions, might one day take a bullet for me. Never had I considered it would be the both of you taking a pendulum to leave me unscathed. My gratitude is too boundless to ever be walled up and forgotten.

It is not a cultural thing! Lee, Price and Cushing were always on TV in the UK!

And I don’t know, maybe I’m reaching here but Vincent Price mentally becoming his vicious father and dragging victims down to the subterranean torture chamber...a little “Rats in the Walls?”

I haven’t seen this movie in many many years...but I remember as a kid that coffin opening scene scared the hell out of me.

I have long had a weakness for Vincent Price. He appears in lots of old time radio adaptations of horror classics etc., and as an OTR and horror literature fan, I ate it up with a spoon. I had always assumed though that his radio work performing literary standbys was just a distraction for him from his perhaps more glamorous movie work, and figured he didn't really care about the story content. Yet I once heard an interview with him in which the host touched on his work in radio and, as soon as it came up, Price couldn't stop going on about how much he had loved performing those classic stories like those of Poe etc. on radio and the educational value of it for people. The host even had trouble getting him back to talking about his latest film. My cynical heart pretty much melted. He had apparently really valued the stories all along. Incidentally, I was recently watching a collection of appearances on the Late Night program by a bizarre comic that David Letterman used to have on the show a lot back in the day. Listening to one of his over the top routines, I eventually realized near the end that it was actually a comical riff on Poe's creepy story "Berenice," right down to the small details of the character difference between the narrator and the person who was the object of his obsession, the two of them being cousins, and the specific obsession etc. I doubt his audience caught the reference though. Poe pops up in the oddest places!

Boy Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, boon companions if I ever saw them.

Kit Ainslie

I should also point out that she was picked for that role, in part, because she starred in a *film adaptation* of Witch-House called Curse of the Crimson Altar.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Barbara Steel also did some lovely voice work as the Daemon Sultan Azathoth, on a bonus track for Mike Dalagar's Dreams in the Witch-House rock opera. The rock opera itself is great, but that track in particular is fantastic. Maybe it's just my thing for older women, but Steele's voice...hoo, *boy.*

Mandy Reznor (She_It)