Halloween is right around the corner. I'm back after 26 days, with my fourteenth proposal on the rise, with seven currently going at the moment. This is also my second proposal of the month, (it is October after all, so it's only fitting I can get at least one more seasonal candidate) I hope he goes well.
What is the work?[]
The Pit and the Pendulum started out as a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in 1842, then it later got a screen adaptation with Vincent Price in 1961. However, we're going to be focusing on the 1991 version of the film with Lance Henriksen as our bad guy.
Who is Tomás de Torquemada? What has he done?[]
Tomás de Torquemada was the infamous leader of the Spanish Inqusition in the late 1400s, a religious fanatic responsible for a reign of terror were thousands of non-Christians were tortured, exiled, forcefully converted, or burned at the stake for heresy. This proposal will be for fictionalized version of him as shown here (also Marlon Brando played Torquemada in Christopher Columbus: the Discovery, a movie I've never seen, but if anyone has, I would be curious to know if Brando's Torquemada could possibly count, which is my only real interest in seeing that movie. Not that that's relevant here, just curious).
Torquemada opens the film accusing a dead man of heresy and pulling his remains out of the ground so that he can desecrate them while he forces the man's family to watch as he subjects the skeletal remains to lashes before crushing what remains of them, and then disinheriting the man's family. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Later on, he intends to publicly execute a supposed heretic, with the film making it clear that like in real life, he has been burning "heretics", and "witches" at the stake for a long time. The woman bribes the executioner not to burn her to death, so instead he chokes her to death while her son watches, and then has her burned post-mortem, while the boy is flogged, seemingly to death. The film's protagonist Maria objects to the torture and executions, Torquemada notices, and feels something strange in her presence, and has her arrested as a witch.
Maria sees numerous people imprisoned and tortured by Torquemada, while she is stripped naked by Torquemada's thugs, while he can't take his eyes off of her, and has her imprisoned, where she befriends a witch named Esmeralda. Torquemada orders his tortured henchmen Mendoza to flog him as self-punishment for lusting after her and is of the belief that he has been bewitched by her to lust towards her. As he orders Maria to watch Esmeralda get tortured to force them to confess to witchcraft (his subordinates will only accept under torture, claiming that confessing otherwise could just be to avoid it), Esmeralda teaches Maria how to use her powers, while Torquemada forbids his henchmen from killing them, as he would prefer to publicly make examples of people like them, and he also would prefer to have Maria witness the tortures first, before the bad stuff starts happening to her.
When Maria's husband Antonio is caught trying to rescue her from captivity, Torquemada forces her to watch him get tortured, and warning her that he will die if she tries to alert him, but she is able to, and they almost escape, they briefly take him as a hostage, only to let them go out of fear, believing that he will have to spare them if they do, but Torquemada has them imprisoned again, with plans to kill Antonio, when she protests, he claims that "In this place, death is mercy". Torquemada is met by a cardinal sent by the pope to convince the former to stop his campaign of terror and stop torturing heretics. Though Torquemada argues with him and tries to justify his actions by claiming it will strike fear in the hearts of sinners, while civilly at first, but as the Cardinal continues to persist, Torquemada has the man buried behind a brick wall despite the man's terrified pleas, while making it clear that he has no intention of stopping.
Torquemada has Maria brought up to his bedroom, where he makes her confess to bewitching him, and then professes his love for her, and then tries to make her sleep with him through coercion, but then won't go through with it, and attempts to kill her to punish her, but then a sword falls down, which he takes as God telling him not to, so he instead beats her, and then cuts her tongue out to silence her, and has her sent back to her cell. Esmeralda is able to heal her as best she can, and uses her powers to make her appear dead, to which Torquemada then has her burned at the stake. But not before she is able to curse him, and ingest gunpowder, killing most of the spectators demanding she burn as well as the executioner, while Torquemada starts hearing Maria's voice, and his mouth starts bleeding so as to symbolize is tongue being cut, he plans to find out what it is.
As Torquemada is about to subject Antonio to the most elaborate death he can muster, with his new device, the titular pit and pendulum, while also having rats gnaw at him, Mendoza snaps out of it and rebels against Torquemada, who angrily proclaims himself as the man's savior, before stabbing him, apparently to death, while Antonio escapes, and fights off Torquemada's soldiers, who he threatens to have burned at the stake if they fail, while lighting fires to hopefully catch Antonio in it. Maria is alive after all! As Torquemada is terrified out of his mind, he impotently commands his men to detain her, when that doesn't work, he desperately tries to convince Maria that he loved her, while she denounces him for all that he is. As he starts to see either the ghosts of the people he hurt, or hallucinations (the film isn't clear either way), Mendoza has just enough strength in him to unlock the trap door, as Torquemada falls to his death (unlike the real Torquemada who died of natural causes), while Mendoza expresses sincere regret for what he's done, and then dies. While Maria and Antonio are freed, thanks to an earlier proclamation from Torquemada of her innocence, and everyone in the prison is freed as well.
Redeeming Qualities?[]
Well, he does display an unhinged sort of zealous "humility" towards God and the church, such as when he chastises his men for having too much fun when they're examining Maria's body while they're supposed to be defending the church, and has Mendoza flog him to punish him for lusting after Maria, and he denies being his savior, insisting that he merely "showed him his sins", insisting that all he does is for the good of the church, asking God for forgiveness when he cuts Maria's tongue out, and says "may god have mercy on your soul" when he fatally wounds Mendoza.
But at the end of the day, they're all hollow, all of the things he chastises his subordinates for, he himself does and worse, he stops denying his obsession with Maria, and is obviously not well intentioned, considering that nearly everyone he tortured and killed was innocent, and is willing to murder his own fellow men of the cloth just so that he can continue to torture "heretics", (and he is indeed shown to be a cackling sadist towards the end) and whenever he asks for forgiveness or mercy, he says it with almost bored, yet slightly irritated tone of voice, and considering Mendoza was just barely able to kill him at the end, Torquemada most likely either wasn't very thorough, or he purposefully stabbed him in a way so that he would bleed out in agony, considering what he does, the latter doesn't seem implausible.
His feelings for Maria, are obviously just obsession, considering everything he does to her and her husband, and he blames her for his own lust. He does look shocked, and then declare her innocent after he thinks she's dead, but he wanted to make an example of her, and declaring her innocent was most likely just so that he could have an excuse to burn Esmeralda at the stake and frame her for killing Maria, I highly doubt he would have done that had he known what would follow pursuit. Also, when Maria says it's not her fault that he is unable to love her, Torquemada doesn't disagree with her and seems more concerned on ensuring that she never tells anyone what happened. He does build a shrine for her when she is seemingly killed, but it's more just an extension of his own creepy obsession with her, and when she comes back, he's terrified rather than happy, and Maria outright calls him a liar and a blasphemer among other things, who uses religion for his own power, and that he never truly loved Maria, he was just obsessed with her.
As far as him being a zealot goes, there are several heroic religious characters in the story, including Maria and Antonio, and the Cardinal who is there to stop him, as well as the fact that movie seems to lean towards the idea of the existence of God without outright confirming it, it is a religious horror film after all, with winks and hints towards Maria and Esmeralda's power's being God-gifted, and Torquemada's damnation being implied as well.
Heinous Standard?[]
General Standard[]
He is responsible for the mass torture and murders of "heretics" of all ages out of religious intolerance, tortured and radicalized Mendoza to serve him, and then later kills him, he buries a Cardinal behind a brick wall, and then there is everything he does to Maria, not least of which attempting to rape her before cutting her tongue out, and attempts to subject Antonio to the worst and most over-the-top death possible. No problems here.
In-Story Standard[]
All of the other villains in the film work for him, a few are particularly obnoxious but none of them get to the same level of cruelty as he does, even outside of following his orders.
System Standard[]
He created the terrifying system of brutality, and the greater church is actively trying to stop him, so there is no system standard to fail here.
Final Verdict[]
Happy Halloween!