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The Raven
[MGM Home Entertainment]
1963; color
Directed by Roger Corman
Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess & Jack Nicholson
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Even Corman acknowledges (in the featurette included as a bonus on this disc) there were increasing similarities between his Poe films as he continued to make them (The Raven was the fifth of nine in the series), thus the need to shake things up a bit and depart from the traditional rendering of a Poe tale and take things in a new direction… like comedy. Let's face it, The Raven is a poem; there's just not enough there to make a movie. (Or is there? Actually, there isn't.) This film has about as much in common with Edgar Allan Poe as Hawaiian Punch has in common with real fruit juice (about 10%). The Raven marks the first time Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre were brought together for a film, and they gel perfectly. Once it's established that Price is the character in the poem who laments his lost Lenore he hears that tapping at his chamber door (sorry, couldn't resist) and then at his window, which he opens to allow in a raven. This is where all similarities to the poem end and the movie really begins to take off. First of all, it's a talking raven with Peter Lorre's voice. He's begging Price, who's apparently a magician of some sort named Dr. Craven, to change him back into a human. Price manages to do this, albeit with some difficulty, and the now-human Lorre (Dr. Benlo) explains to him how he challenged another magician to a duel of magic earlier that evening and had been turned into a raven. But, upon seeing a portrait of Lenore, he tells Craven he saw her earlier that night at the other magician's house. Now, seeing as how she's been dead for two years, Craven thinks this is impossible. But when he learns the identity of the other magician, who it turns out was a longtime nemesis of his father's (Boris Karloff as Dr. Scarabus), he fears her soul may be trapped as some sort of magical hostage/prisoner. (He should be so lucky.) He decides that he and Benlo must immediately go to Scarabus's castle. As luck would have it, Craven's snoopy daughter and Benlo's bumbling son (a VERY young Jack Nicholson) also come along for the ride, but strange forces try to kill them by making the stagecoach almost go off a cliff at breakneck speed although they make it to the castle just fine. Once inside, they are treated royally by Scarabus, who's obviously too smug and up to something—which is the desire to steal Craven's magical powers away from him. Before they can figure out what's going on, Benlo challenges Scarabus to another duel of magic and is apparently disintegrated by a bolt of lightning. By the time it's revealed that Benlo is in fact totally alive and well and Craven learns his wife faked her death to leave him fir Scarabus, he realizes the only way to settle this is issue is a good old fashioned magic duel to the death between himself and Scarabus. This is really the money scene in the movie. Everything from a flying throne to wacky pre-CGI effects, it goes on for a good three minutes and is truly a lot of fun to watch. In the end Craven wins, of course, Scarabus is defeated (but not dead) and his house burns in typically vivid AIP style, and Benlo (to his chagrin) is once again a talkative raven. That is, until Craven lays down one last bit of magic so that he speaks, uh, nevermore. As I said, Price, Lorre and Karloff are all top notch here, with tongues firmly planted in cheek, making The Raven the most "fun" film of the Poe series.
—the Kommandant
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