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The Pit and the Pendulum - a musicabre

USA 2022
produced by
Henry Borriello, Danny Ashkenasi (executive), Edward Elder (executive) for Fredrick Byers Productions
directed by Danny Ashkenasi
starring Danny Ashkenasi, Edward Elder, Mathew Gnagy, Gonzalo Trigueros
screenplay by Danny Ashkenasi, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe, music by Danny Ashkenasi

short
Danny Ashkenasi's musicabres, Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum

review by
Mike Haberfelner

His latest piece of music transports a modern day composer (Danny Ashkenasi) back to the dark ages where he's taken captive by the inquisition, tried (by himself as it is), thrown into a pitch dark dungeon where he almost falls into a bottomless pit, then tied to a rack beneath an ever descending pendulum with a blade mounted to its end to cut up our unlucky hero, and finally he sees the walls literally closing in on him, driving him to the bottomless pit should he not want to be crushed. However, what the composer only imagines has also consequences in the real world ...

 

Now Edgar Allan Poe's original story The Pit and the Pendulum isn't so much a story of narrative finesse as it is a description of the terrors of torture, and thus doesn't lend itself all too well to cinematic adaptations - which in turn means that those who have tried (and there were quite a few over the years) usually take quite some artistic licence with the source material. Danny Ashkenasi has taken a different route though and has remained fairly faithful to Poe's story but put it into a narrative context via his framing story, as well as setting everything to music, so much so that some of Poe's words are actually sung on screen. And this works remarkably well, as not only does Ashkenasi hit the right note when it comes to the film's mood, he also enriches the story with nightmarish and often surreal imagery, often goes for associative rather than linear storytelling, and ultimately delivering and enjoyably disturbing piece of cinema.

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review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
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love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
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a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
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the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
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