Ugo Guerra and Elio Scardamaglia, the producers of Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963), had "shown me an Italian print of The Pit and the Pendulum before I started writing it: 'Give us something like this', they said." When asked if another of his films, The Long Hair of Death (1964), was inspired by Corman's film, Gastaldi replied, "Yes, of course! The Pit and the Pendulum had a big influence on Italian horror films. Everybody borrowed from it." Stephen King felt that one of the film's most powerful shocks—the discovery of Elizabeth's hideously decayed corpse—had a major impact on the genre and served as one of the most significant horror sequences of the decade. In fact, shortly after seeing the film in eighth grade, a young King took inspiration from Monarch Books's film tie-ins and wrote an eight-page novelization of The Pit and the Pendulum, "blissfully unaware that [he] was in violation of every plagiarism and copyright statute in the history of the world", and managed to sell over thirty copies for 25¢ each at his school before one of his teachers forced him to return the profits. King later wrote, "Following the Hammer films, this becomes, I think, the most important moment in the post-1960 horror film, signaling a return to an all-out effort to terrify the audience...and a willingness to use any means at hand to do it." Padded television version In 1968, when the film was sold to ABC-TV for television airings, the network noted that the film was too short to fill the desired two-hour time slot. They requested that AIP extend the film's runtime. Approximately five minutes of additional footage were subsequently shot by Corman's production assistant Tamara Asseyev. Of the original cast members, only Luana Anders was available at the time, and the new sequence featured her character, Catherine Medina, confined to a lunatic asylum. After much screaming and hair pulling, Catherine reveals the details of her horrific story to her fellow inmates, at which point the film itself follows as a flashback. See also List of American films of 1961 Gothic film – Notable films Phantom of Morrisville, a 1966 Czech comedy film. References External links 1960s American films— 1960s English-language films 1961 films 1961 horror films American horror films American International Pictures films Films based on short fiction Films based on The Pit and the Pendulum Films directed by Roger