I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

A Mish Mash Of Poe



The Pit & The Pendulum aka The Inquisitor (1991)

This could easily go under the category Movies You Watch Because Of Who's  In Them since this movie not only stars Lance Henrickson, always a favorite, but also Jeffrey Combs (who's usually an H.P. Lovecraft kind of guy) and Oliver Reed (in too brief of a role). As you know, Edgar Allen Poe didn't write novels, he wrote short stories and poems, so to make a full length movie they have to kind of mix several short stories together. In this case it's three: The Pit & The Pendulum, The Cask Of Amontillado and The Sword Of Damocles. And they gave the movie a happy ending - not usually found in Poe's writings but you cheer for the winners here anyway.

The year is 1492 and Spain is neck deep in matters of the famous Inquisition. The Inquisitor, a supposedly pious (but far from it) man named Torquemada (Lance Henrickson) will go to any lengths to rout out the 'guilty' - he even raids a tomb, has the skeleton strung up, denounces the dead man as a heretic, and orders the skeleton be given 20 lashes - effectively reducing it to a pile of rubble. He takes the rubble and grounds it into powder, putting it into an hourglass and stripping the family of all lands and money. 

Yes, he's a sadistic, self-righteous son of a bitch - the perfect servant of the Catholic Church of that time. Or was he? Rumor spreads that the Pope doesn't like the fact that people are being tortured and killed in the name of God (surprise surprise) and is sending an emissary to essentially stop the work Torquemada has become so damn good at. The man, who's not above taking a lash or wearing a belt with nails that pierce his flesh himself will be damned (so to speak) to let some pompous robed dude from Rome tell him what to do.

In the meantime, the tortures and killings continue. When one woman is put to death and her young son, crying for his mother is whipped by the guards, a baker's wife, sweet Maria protests and immediately is accused and arrested as a witch. Now Maria is good and pure, and can't stand anyone being hurt much less all the persecution these people suffer. Her pleadings to The Inquisitor are not ignored but not because his heart is moved - it's another part of his body, which reacts when she is stripped naked as they look for 'devil's marks'. There's dark humor here that comes out once in a while, one guy, not finding a single mole or birthmark on her pinches her hard saying 'There it is, the Devil's mark'. Another says 'Are you sure, it's fading.' He pinches her harder saying 'I'm sure, there it is.' She is thrown in a dungeon with an old woman who freely admits that she IS a witch but not the devil worshiping kind - she's a midwife who also heals when she can and does good things. She says Maria can do the same but Maria, taught that any witch must be with the Devil is scared of her.

A Cardinal of The Pope (Oliver Reed) comes and hands Torquemada a writ declaring the Inquisition to be over. Not to be stopped, even by the Pope himself, Torquemada burns the writ and walls the Cardinal up to slowly suffocate. He says he will claim the Cardinal never arrived. Lying comes easy to this 'man of God'. The tortures and killings continue, even intensify, as Torquemada finds himself more and more attracted to Maria - telling her she must be a witch because she 'made' him fall in love with her. She admits this in order to save her husband, who had also been arrested when he attempted to rescue her. 

He comes close to raping her, but the 'sword of Damocles' that he keeps above his bed for whatever reason (read the story) falls and barely misses them both. He sees this as a sign of God that Maria has to live - but never tell what he did to her. He cuts out her tongue, throwing her back into the dungeon with the witch. The witch tells her she must go into a state that simulates death, then when they throw her in the open pit of bodies, she can escape. Trouble is, when she is thought 'dead', Torquemada, in his grief, puts her in finery and entombs her in a stone coffin.

As for the baker, he's suffered greatly at the hands of the Inquisitor's men. As a final torture to kill him, the Inquisitor decides to use his brand new toy - the Pendulum. We get a rather protracted scene of first Maria waking up in her stone coffin and feebly trying to get out, while the baker (his name's Antonio, sorry) is tied down watching the blade come closer and closer. The rats are already at him, not waiting for him to die - he attempts to get them to chew on the ropes by getting blood on them which works enough for him to get free just as the pendulum cuts him slightly - he then fights off all the guards (he had served as a soldier so he knows some moves) and rushes to Maria who 'called' him with her mind - the witch had taught her some tricks since she 'has the power'. 

He manages to get the lid off the stone coffin just as everyone reaches the room. He's about to be killed when Maria slowly rises, pointing a finger at Torquemada and mentally calls him 'heretic', 'blasphemer' and other names which everyone hears although they think it is a divine condemnation and finally stand up to the Inquisitor. He fights back but he's ill prepared for all of them to rebel at once, and falls into a pit of stakes, joining many he had sent to a similar fate.

A happy Antonio reunites with Maria, understanding that she does have abilities but saying nothing, and everyone is released from the dungeons. When one attempts to stop it, the bookkeeper (I guess) Francisco (Jeffrey Combs) reads Torquemada's own words that Maria had been tried and found innocent so she was free to go - as was all the rest. This is uncharacteristically a nice, happy ending to a Poe tale as we assume that the Spanish Inquisition is now officially over and the people are now free from the fear they've been living under.

Hey, any movie with this cast is going to be decent, even if they try to mix three Poe stories into one movie. I have no complaints with this one.