CASTLE FREAK (1995)

I had been saving this for my Halloween viewing. Cerpts did a very positive review over in THE LAND OF CERPTS AND HONEY and I'm a big fan of the same director (Stuart Gordon)'s other Lovecraft adaption, DAGON (although to call this a Lovecraft adaption is ridiculous) but I was bitterly disappointed and quickly lost interest in the tiresome guilt ridden American family who inherit a castle in Italy. Of course there is something nasty in the dungeon. Cerpts put forward some interesting psychological points but if they held any water I'd totally past the point of caring. Lots of screams in the night and endless wandering down corridors and staircases. As with many modern horror films that lack a supernatural element this one resorts to some particularly nasty physical horror and a heavy helping of exceedingly unpleasant sexual violence. I lasted about an hour when I decided I could find something better to do. Rating *

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1991)

• 

  I was three quarters of the way through Stuart Gordon's straight to video version of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and had decided to consign it to the movie wastebin. It's a pretty nasty and voyeristic piece of torture exploitation which is badly acted by everybody except Lance Henriksen, who seems so convincing that psychiatric help seems more needed than praise. No hint of send up from Henriksen! The sets are cheap and the costumes are obviously leftovers from some bigger if not more worthy project. Then the film gets to the sequence from which it takes its title, the pit and the pendulum, and I have to admit that things become a bit more imaginative and actually have something of the atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe, and this is followed by ten minutes of footage that really delivers a phantasmagoria almost worth of Matthew Lewis's novel "The Monk" although, sadly the the director blows the whole thing with the final syrupy ending. A shame, because it almost redeemed itself. Go watch Roger Corman's version again. Rating *