Review #1,087: 'The Raven' (1963)

Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations always had a loose spirit about them, fleshing out the source material so it would flow nicely as a 90-minute feature. With The Raven, the tale of a tortured lover tormented by a bird rapping on his chamber door that was so hilariously lampooned in a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode ("Ever more! Ever more!"), Corman uses just a couple of Poe's 18 stanzas as inspiration to tell his own preposterous story of duelling wizards and a stolen love. The fifth in the so-called Corman-Poe cycle, Corman and script-writer Richard Matheson, bolstered by the success of Tales of Terror the year before, again opt for a comedic take on Poe's haunting text.

In the 15th century, powerful sorcerer Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Price) broods in his study, mourning the loss of his wife Lenore (Hazel Court) two years earlier. Much to his surprise, he is visited by a talking, wine-guzzling raven who turns out to be fellow wizard Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre), transformed after an altercation with the evil Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). After Craven turns the boozy spell-caster back to his normal self using a concoction of bizarre ingredients, Bedlo sees a painting of the apparently-dead Lenore and swears he saw her in Scarabus's castle. As curiosity gets the better of him, Craven, along with his daughter Estelle (Olive Sturgess) and Bedlo's goofy son Rexford (Jack Nicholson), journey to Scarabus's caste in the hope of finding answers.

Although it is nowhere near the standards seen in the likes of The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), The Raven has its moments, and the main strength is in the ingenious casting of Price, Lorre and Karloff, all legends of the genre. They are totally game and are bags of fun, particularly Karloff who, at the time, was being introduced to a whole new generation of horror fans. The comedy is hit-and-miss. Sometimes it's funny and charming, but often it is cringe-inducingly daft. The climax is well directed and impressive-looking, especially for such a low-budget feature, but it's also overwhelmingly silly, and not in a good way. While The Raven is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, it feels like a 20-minute piece stretched out over 86 minutes, and may have worked better as part of a portmanteau piece.


Directed by: Roger Corman
Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess, Jack Nicholson
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie