For me I think it began in 1961 when I saw, in the newspapers, this ad for Roger Corman’s production of The Pit and the Pendulum starring Vincent Price at his most unhinged and gorgeous mysterious Barbara Steele.
When I came across this image online decades later, I remembered how I used to draw my own versions of it, of the man struggling below the swinging pendulum, his wrists tethered to the slab on which he lay, his frilled sixteenth century shirt mostly torn from his body. I don’t recall drawing the woman, however; just the man who, under her gaze and scantily clad form, was tortured by a maniac in a dark hood.
I’m not saying this image caused me to eventually become fascinated by dominant women; I think I already knew from childhood the domineering power of females over men. Seeing the poster, done anonymously at the time by the renowned Reynold Brown, who did the famous Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman publicity painting, crystallized this type of situation for me visually in a tangible form.
Do you too have a book or image that similarly first affected you, enthralled and entertained you with the idea of a man in a masochistic, powerless posture underneath the watchful and possibly amused eye of a woman who clearly flaunted but simultaneously denied him her charms?
In the variation below, we see the woman’s dominance emphasized even more by the choice of angle.
I still remember seeing this movie in the theater, filled with kids like myself, and I can still hear the screaming that went on every time the screen would turn monochromatic in blue or purple or red or green, which meant something especially creepy was going to happen. But in recent years (warning: spoiler if you haven’t seen it) I’ve been struck by the film’s resemblance as much to the noir femme fatale scenario as that of the Poesque terror tale.
I believe I saw this on a double feature bill at the Granada Theater in Chicago’s Rogers Park, the neighborhood where I grew up. The other film was, if memory serves, The Giant of Marathon, the exciting Steve Reeves sword-and-sandal epic which featured Mylene Demongeot as the beautiful blonde “good girl” and onyx-tressed Daniela Rocca as a cunning temptress provocatively clad to tempt Steve to the darker side of his nature.
What an afternoon of entertainment! And injections into my subconscious that took hold forever…
Irv O. Neil's EROTICA IS MY TRADE 
