Comments on the DVD I saw The Pit and the Pendulum in 1963 and it scared the hell out of this 14-year-old, just as did The Fall of the House of Usher (still my favourite of the Poe/Corman films). The sequence that really put a silver streak through my hair and, if we exclude the climatic pendulum scene, the one to stick most vividly in my memory, is when Barbara Steele rises from the tomb and pursues Vincent Price. She comes out of the tomb and he retreats, she follows, slowly. She's so close as he stumblingly edges his way down spiralling steps... or does he? I've just bought the beautifully restored version on dvd, with a commentary by Roger Corman, and she doesn't follow him down the steps at all - instead, he stumbles and falls, landing on the floor of the dungeon. Is my memory really so bad, or are there two versions of that sequence?
Also, neither the packaging on the box, nor the Corman commentary give any information about the theatrical prologue included on the dvd. This is a 5 minute sequence that was presumably axed before release. What was its purpose, who was the actress and who was she portraying?