The Blood Demon
The Blood Demon( Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel in West Germany), also known as The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, and Castle of the Walking Dead, is a 1967 West German horror film directed by Harald Reinl and starring Christopher Lee, Karin Dor, and Lex Barker.
The film, written by Manfred R. Köhler, is based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story" The Pit and the Pendulum" and concerns the saga of Count Regula( Lee) who, after being drawn and quartered for murdering 12 maidens, returns to life seeking revenge.
The film was advertised in Rhode Island newspapers as Crimson Demon, due to a practice at the time of deleting the word" Blood" from film titles.
It was shot at the Bavaria Studios in Munich.
The film's sets were designed by the art directors Gabriel Pellon and Rolf Zehetbauer.
Julius Caesar (1970 film)
Julius Caesar is a 1970 British independent film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name, directed by Stuart Burge from a screenplay by Robert Furnival.
The film stars Charlton Heston, Jason Robards, John Gielgud, Robert Vaughn, Richard Chamberlain, Diana Rigg, and Jill Bennett.
It is the first film version of the play made in color.
Old Mac
Old Mac is a 1961 film directed by Michael Winner.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film in Panavision and Pathe Color directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders.
The screenplay by Richard Matheson was loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story of the same name.
Set in sixteenth-century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's 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 brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence.
The film was the second title in the popular series of Poe-based movies released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman's " House of Usher" released the previous year.
Like "House", the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter.
A critical and box-office hit, "Pit"'s commercial success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price.
The series ended in 1965 with the release of "The Tomb of Ligeia".
Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's "The Whip and the Body" (1963) to Dario Argento's " Deep Red " (1975).
Stephen King has described one of "Pit"'s major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1913 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum is a three-reel film adapted from the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name, directed, and produced by pioneering French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché through her American company Solax Studios in 1913.
The Pit and the Pendulum (2009 film)
Edgar Allan
Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is a 2009 horror erotic thriller film directed by David DeCoteau and starring Lorielle New, Stephen Hansen and Bart Voitila.
It is retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic" The Pit and the Pendulum" with a new twist.
Stuart Burge
Stuart Burge( 15 January 1918 – 24 January 2002) was an English film director, actor and producer.
The son of H. O. Burge, by his marriage to K. M. Haig, Burge was educated at Eagle House School, Sandhurst, and Felsted School, Essex, then trained for an acting career at the Old Vic, 1936 – 37, and at Oxford Rep, 1937 – 38.
He was back at the Old Vic and appearing in the West End theatre in 1938 – 39, then during the Second World War of 1939 – 45 he served in the British Army's Intelligence Corps.
After the war he returned to his acting career at the Bristol Old Vic, the Young Vic, and the Commercial Theatre, between 1946 and 1949.
He was a director by 1948.
He was responsible for many distinguished productions for both stage and television, including four film adaptations of plays.
He married Josephine Parker an American Actress and had five children: Lucy Burge; Stephen Burge; Nicholas Burge; Matthew Burge and Emma Burge.
Devi (1970 film)
Devi is a 1970 film directed by Madhusudan Rao V..
David Robertson (engineer)
David Robertson (1875–1941) was the first Professor of Electrical Engineering at Bristol University.
Robertson had wide interests and one of these was horology – he wanted to provide the foundation of what we could call “horological engineering”, that is, a firm science-based approach to the design of accurate mechanical clocks.
He contributed a long series on the scientific foundations of precision clocks to the "Horological Journal" which was the main publication for the trade in the UK; he and his students undertook research on clocks and pendulums (some funded by the Society of Merchant Venturers); and he designed at least one notable clock, to keep University time and control the chiming of in the Wills Memorial Building from its inauguration on 1925, for which he also designed the chiming mechanism.
Today, we get accurate time from atomic clock ensembles in observatories round the world, compared and distributed by GPS satellites and over the internet, and displayed on almost any public or personal screen.
Accurate time has become ubiquitous and its maintenance a branch of information and communications technology.
A century ago none of this existed, and the world depended on the pendulum clock to keep its time, referenced to astronomical observations.
There was a scientific literature on the behaviour of pendulums and clocks; and a widespread craft-based industry making timepieces; but it could not be said that horology was a branch of engineering.
Robertson became Professor of Electrical Engineering in Merchant Venturer’s Technical College in 1902.
MVTC merged with University College Bristol when the latter was granted a Royal Charter in 1909 and became the engineering faculty of the new University of Bristol – Robertson then became the first professor of the subject in the faculty.
He served in this post until his death in 1941.
Clock-wise, the Shortt Synchronome Free Pendulum clock entered service at the Royal Observatory in 1923 and kept Greenwich, and therefore the nation’s, time until supplanted by quartz clocks in the 1940s.
Throughout Robertson’s career therefore, pendulum time was paramount.
Suppliers such as the Synchronome Company or Gents of Leicester could by 1925 have supplied perfectly satisfactory and well-proven systems to run the bell and slave clocks throughout the building.
The fact that the University chose to commission a unique and original design is a tribute perhaps to its pride in the new building and to its distinguished Professor, who was able to put into practice the principles that he had developed.
The Robertson Clock
Originally mounted in an interior foyer of the Wills Memorial Building, Robertson's clock is housed in an oak case 1753 x 837 x 310 mm (h/w/d), originally carried on stout oak “dogs” let into the masonry of an internal wall.
The case was also secured to the wall through its back, but does not support any of the mechanisms, which are separately mounted through the case back into the wall using studs.
The opening front door is fully glazed.
In its new home in Queen’s Building the original studs are re-mounted on to a large steel plate, firmly screwed to the reinforced concrete wall.
At the top of the case a clock dial displays hours and minutes as kept by the pendulum.
The dial is a standard Gents slave clock movement which is advanced by a pulse every 30s, counted down from seconds pulses generated by the pendulum.
Additional circuits in the clock once generated other half-minute pulses that controlled 3 strings of similar slave clocks throughout the building.
Right down the centre of the case is the pendulum, of the order of a metre long and with a period of 2 seconds.
It is suspended from a bracket attached to a massive iron casting bolted through to the wall, which also carries the “escapement” mechanism to the right under the face.
This drives the pendulum with a small impulse of force every second, generated by the drop of a small weight under the control of an electromagnet.
Part of the mechanism includes a 60-tooth ratchet wheel advanced on every pendulum swing by a pawl driven by the electromagnet.
Originally this operated a pair of contacts by two pins on its periphery to generate the half-minute pulses, but at some stage these contacts were removed.
To the left of the pendulum is the regulator.
This is arranged to apply a small force to the pendulum which through an ingenious linkage effectively works against gravity, slowing the pendulum down.
The force comes from a torque generated by a spiral hair-spring, one end being attached to the pivot of a lever that forms part of the escapement linkage, the other to a disk that can be rotated in small steps by a solenoid-operated “stepper motor”.
This allows the period of the pendulum to be adjusted by changing the torque, under the control of a system that compares the pendulum phase to a time standard (originally a daily pulse sent out over the telegraph network at 10.00 GMT).
Behind the pendulum and near its top is a standard aneroid barometer, and below that a mercury thermometer.
These would have been used when checking the clocks’ rate, which depends on both atmospheric temperature and pressure.
To the left of the pendulum is the Civil Time Unit (CTU).
This is essentially a clock that receives a pulse every second from the pendulum and keeps track of local time, GMT or BST depending on the season, to control the pulses sent to Great George to make it chime on the hours, 0700 through 2100 except Sundays.
The CTU was driven by its own electromagnet.
On the right is the Greenwich Time Unit (GTU), which essentially kept GMT by counting seconds impulses but also controlled the sequencing of the synchronising system around 10.00 am GMT every day.
Again, the GTU had its own electromagnet drive.
Behind the wall to which the clock was mounted there was a Control Box that housed several terminal frames, some relays, and ancillary components, that were connected to contacts on the TUs by wires going through the wall.
Most of this has now been lost.
The clock and its circuits were power by a 24 volt lead-acid battery, possibly also housed in this room.
This Control Box has also been recovered and will be installed beside the clock case to house support electronics.
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman( born April 5, 1926) is an American director, producer, and actor.
He has been called" The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film.
Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of low- budget cult films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Admired by members of the French New Wave and" Cahiers du cinéma", in 1964 Corman was the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, as well as in the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art.
He was the co-founder of New World Pictures, a prolific multimedia company that helped to cement Fox as a major American television network, and is a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award" for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers."
Corman mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, John Sayles, and James Cameron, and was highly influential in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
He also helped to launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Sylvester Stallone, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner.
Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in the films of directors who started with him, including" The Silence of the Lambs The Godfather Part IIApollo 13 The Manchurian Candidate" and" Philadelphia".
A documentary about Corman's life and career entitled, directed by Alex Stapleton, premiered at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals in 2011.
The film's TV rights were picked up by A&E IndieFilms after a well- received screening at Sundance.

Question: Do both films, The Pit And The Pendulum (1961 Film) and Julius Caesar (1970 Film), have the directors who are from the same country?
Answer: no