The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film)

The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was based on Edgar Allan Poes short story of the same name. Set in sixteenthcentury Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sisters mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brotherinlaw during the films climactic sequence.

In sixteenth century Spain, Englishman Francis Barnard John Kerr visits the castle of his brotherinlaw Nicholas Medina Vincent Price to investigate the mysterious death of his sister Elizabeth Barbara Steele. Nicholas and his younger sister Catherine Luana Anders offer a vague explanation that Elizabeth died from a rare blood disorder six months earlier Nicholas is evasive when Francis asks for specific details about the disease. Francis vows that he will not leave until he discovers the true circumstances surrounding his sisters death.During dinner with the family physician, Dr. Leon Antony Carbone, Francis again asks about his sisters death. Dr. Leon tells him that his sister died of massive heart failure, literally dying of fright. Francis demands to be shown where Elizabeth died. Nicholas takes him to the castles torture chamber. Nicholas reveals that Elizabeth, under the influence of the castles heavy atmosphere, became obsessed with the chambers torture devices. After becoming progressively unbalanced, one day she locked herself into an iron maiden, and died after whispering the name Sebastian. Francis refuses to believe Nicholass story. ........

Source: Wikipedia