The Story

I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

Our adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale of Gothic horror, The Pit and the Pendulum, rediscovers this timeless tale of judgment, condemnation, despair, hope, and eventual redemption.

A victim of the Spanish Inquisition is led before an Inquisitor’s tribunal. Condemned for reasons unknown to him, he is sentenced to the dungeons to await his death. In the subterranean darkness the Victim struggles to understand his quandary, desperate to find reason, hope and faith, all the while discovering the fiendish machinations his treacherous captors employ in their efforts to destroy him.

Producing our adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale presented several concerns pertaining to the use of the full text of the story, or not. Creative and logistical concerns had to be addressed that would impact the presentation of the work. It proved a tall order to adapt this particular story to a visual narrative, when so much of it is 1) within the thoughts of the protagonist, and 2) most of the events occur in the deepest dark of a dungeon environment.

In the end, as much as I would love to have used the full text of the story in both the film and comic, but it just wasn’t meant to be. We settled for visuals in both cases to help tell the whole story, filling in the editorial holes we left for the curious in which to tumble. With that off our collective chests, we present to you EA Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, as published in 1909 as part of a collection of his works, entitled Selected Tales of Mystery.

Swing by the link and immerse yourself into the story, HERE. Enjoy!