For lack of anything better to watch on the zillions of channels we have on Directv.....I turned to an old classic, on Turner Classic Movies.....The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allen Poe and starring one of the classics himself...Vincent Price. As I was watching it, I remembered being 12 years old in 1961 and going to the theater on Saturday afternoon to watch it. As I watched it tonight, when the last 5 minutes of the movie has no music, no sound, except the forboding swoosh..............................swoosh...................................swoosh......................................of the pendulum edging ever closer to Vincent 's victim, I felt the same creepy, nerve-racking emotions that I felt on that day, as the pendulum begins slicing the victim slowly with each "swoosh".....of course...being a horror fan, I had already read Edgar Allen Poe's version and knew that in the end, the victim was saved . Still.....the constant sound of the pendulum slicing heavily through the air was very disturbing then............and now.
Vincent Price made many horror movies in his lifetime,as well as movies of other genres. Several of them were the stories of Poe. When I was watching all of these movies as a kid, I thought Vincent Price was some exotic actor from a foreign country. It was just what he projected to the audience as an actor. Imagine my disappoinment when I discovered he was from St. Louis ,Missouri, just a few miles from me......but I tried not to think about it, :-)"A man who limits his interests, limits his life." .....Vincent Price
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