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Date Posted: 16:48:07 06/20/01 Wed
Author: Griff
Subject: And here's one for The Raven!
In reply to: Griff 's message, "Hit the secret clicker for yet another review!" on 15:57:23 06/20/01 Wed


THE RAVEN


Like Roger Corman’s 1963 version (which also features Boris Karloff), this decent horror has bugger all to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem bar the title and a few unsubtle references along the way. There’s a pointless interpretive dance sequence in a theatre, a stuffed raven sitting on a desk and Bela Lugosi’s character has a Poe fixation but the actual plot has more in common with The Pit and the Pendulum than The Raven, what with the torture chamber and all.

This has Lugosi in another one of his charming performances as Dr. Vollin, a brilliant brain surgeon who reluctantly comes out of retirement to perform an operation on a judge’s daughter (Irene Ware). He falls in love with her and plans to get rid of both her father and fiance in order that she might be his! Mwwwaaaa ha ha ha!! To keep his hands clean Vollin disfigures criminal Edmond Bateman (the amazingly versatile Karloff) and will only give him back his face if he does as ordered. A story not greatly inspired by Poe there, but still one that breezes by, clocking in at a not overlong 61 minutes.

Never mind that Poe wouldn’t recognise this as his poem if he tripped over it, because this is still an enjoyable film with two reliably watchable performances from the two horror icons. Lugosi does well with a rather hammy character who is given to mad pronouncements like describing himself as “a God” and “the sanest man alive”! Karloff gets the better end of the deal, cutting a sympathetic figure even though his character is a killer and mutilator; his disfigurement at the hands of Vollin is quite horrible. Karloff seems to be much underrated as an actor – he’s given due credit as a giant of this genre but not as someone who can disappear into a role the way he often does. He’s great to watch when he gets his hands on a meaty role like this one.

None of the other actors register much – Ware and her love interest Lester Matthews make up one of those wet, flavourless couples who tend to populate films like this one, and are never very interesting outside of Vollin’s dastardly plans for them. Lugosi and Karloff are pretty much the whole show; past my scribbled notes I can’t remember much about it so it’s not exactly one of those movies that sticks in the mind, and I could quite happily live my life never seeing it again, but it sure beats Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and most of the other, more highly regarded entries in the Universal canon.



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