The greatest movie ever made..!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

If you've never seen this British Film Institute-produced short subject, hasten thee worthwith to BFI's Schalken the Painter disc, where it resides as a very special extra. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, this is a brilliantly realised film rich in atmosphere and dread; one of the best pure horror films I've ever seen and (almost) completely dialogue free. Brian Peck (whose remarkable resume includes everything from Twisted Nerve to 'Z' Cars) stars as a prisoner condemned by black clad monks to 'the pit', where he's subjected to a series of exquisitely cruel tortures designed, it seems, to drive him to madness. Brilliantly shot in black and white by Gus Coma - whose other work seems to consist primarily of industrial films and softcore pornos - The Pit is as atmospheric as the best Riccardo Freda Gothic horror. Consigned to obscurity because of its 28-minute running time, this is a classic waiting to be discovered.