Last Friday, Vincent Price was hunting a creature that lived on people’s spines.
Tonight, things have become much more reasonable.
There are wizards. There is a talking raven. Boris Karloff is throwing spells. Peter Lorre is complaining.
And a very young Jack Nicholson has wandered into the whole mess looking like nobody warned him what kind of movie this was.
Welcome back to the Terror Glow Drive-In.
Vincent Price Month continues with The Raven.
Earl has already put a raven on the concession stand. It is not ours.
Nobody knows where it came from. We have decided not to ask questions.
The Earl Rating
Feature: The Raven
Year: 1963
Best watched: On a dark October night with absolutely no expectations of a faithful Edgar Allan Poe adaptation
Scare level: 2 out of 5
1950s/60s cheese: 5 out of 5
Wizard arguments: 5 out of 5
Vincent Price eyebrows: Fully operational
Chance Earl has attempted a spell since watching this: Unfortunately high
Wait. This Is Edgar Allan Poe?
Sort of.
The movie opens with Poe’s famous raven imagery.
There is a gloomy room. There is a man mourning his lost Lenore. There is a raven. And then the raven starts talking.
At that point Roger Corman takes Poe by the hand, politely thanks him for coming, and wanders off in an entirely different direction.
Screenwriter Richard Matheson used Poe’s poem mainly as a launching pad for a comic fantasy involving rival sorcerers, transformations, castles and magical duels.
TCM describes the movie as a loose comic take on Poe’s poem, which is probably the safest possible description.
If you’ve read The Raven and are waiting for a faithful cinematic interpretation of grief, loss and madness…
You may want another Drive – In.
If you’d rather watch Vincent Price and Boris Karloff try to destroy each other with magic while Peter Lorre makes sarcastic comments nearby…
Earl has saved you a parking space.
So What Is The Raven Actually About?
Vincent Price plays Dr. Erasmus Craven, a magician who has withdrawn from the world after the death of his beloved wife, Lenore.
One night, a raven appears.
Not particularly unusual for a gothic horror movie.
Then the raven begins talking. More unusual.
The bird turns out to be Dr. Adolphus Bedlo, another magician who has been transformed into a raven by the powerful Dr. Scarabus.
Bedlo is played by Peter Lorre.
This immediately improves everything.
Craven manages to turn him back into a man, and Bedlo tells him that while visiting Scarabus’s castle, he saw someone who looked remarkably like Craven’s supposedly dead wife.
This is enough to get everybody moving.
Craven wants answers.
Bedlo wants revenge.
Craven’s daughter Estelle comes along. So does Bedlo’s son Rexford.
And off they go to Scarabus’s castle.
What could possibly go wrong?
Please remember that Boris Karloff lives there.
Peter Lorre Has Arrived
One of the great pleasures of The Raven is Peter Lorre.
His Dr. Bedlo is cowardly, irritated, sneaky and perpetually unimpressed with nearly everyone around him.
Lorre had already worked with Price in Corman’s Tales of Terror, and their comic chemistry helped lead to The Raven.
You can see why.
Price’s Erasmus Craven is dignified and almost absurdly polite. Lorre’s Bedlo looks like he has been inconvenienced since approximately breakfast. Put the two together and the movie immediately becomes funnier.
Price can raise one eyebrow.
Lorre can mutter something.
Nothing else needs to happen.
Earl has asked whether we can hire Peter Lorre to work the concession stand. There are several logistical problems with this idea. We have decided to begin with the largest one.
Boris Karloff Enters the Building
And then there is Boris Karloff.
Dr. Scarabus lives in an enormous castle because apparently powerful sorcerers are prohibited from owning modest ranch homes.
Scarabus is gracious. Polite. Cultured. And obviously up to something.
Karloff doesn’t need to overplay it.
By 1963, audiences already knew that the man who had played Frankenstein’s monster could make standing quietly in a room feel threatening.
Here he gets something even more enjoyable: A sense of humor.
Watching Vincent Price and Boris Karloff face each other is half the reason to watch the movie.
The elegant Price.
The imposing Karloff.
Two horror legends wandering through elaborate sets while Peter Lorre lurks nearby complaining.
That is a perfectly acceptable Friday night.
And Yes, That Is Jack Nicholson
There is another familiar face hiding in this movie.
Rexford Bedlo — Peter Lorre’s son — is played by Jack Nicholson.
Yes. That Jack Nicholson.
This was very early in Nicholson’s career. The Raven was only one of a number of low-budget pictures he made around Roger Corman’s orbit before becoming one of the most recognizable actors in Hollywood.
Here he’s young, earnest and surrounded by Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Which must have been one extraordinary day at work. Actually, seventeen extraordinary days.
According to the AFI Catalog, filming on The Raven was completed in just 17 days.
Earl cannot get the projector bulb changed in seventeen days.
Roger Corman made an entire movie.
Vincent Price Intermission
If you’re new to Vincent Price Month, tonight gives you a very good lesson in why Price became so much fun to watch.
He could play horror completely straight. He could be sinister. He could be elegant. And, when the movie called for it, he could also stand in the middle of absolute nonsense and somehow make the nonsense better.
The Raven was part of director Roger Corman’s run of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired films, many of them starring Price. It was the fifth of Corman’s eight Poe pictures — although calling this one an “adaptation” of Poe’s famous poem is being extremely generous.
Roger Corman’s Poe Machine
By the time The Raven arrived, Roger Corman had discovered something valuable:
Audiences liked Edgar Allan Poe.
They liked Vincent Price.
And they especially liked Edgar Allan Poe movies starring Vincent Price.
Corman had begun his Poe cycle with House of Usher in 1960 and followed it with films including The Pit and the Pendulum, Premature Burial and Tales of Terror.
Then came The Raven.
AFI notes that the movie was prompted in part by the success of Tales of Terror, another AIP Poe production.
But Corman wasn’t interested in simply repeating himself. So this time he leaned into comedy. And that was a very good decision.
By 1963, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre all came with enormous horror-movie baggage. Audiences knew these men. The actors knew audiences knew them.
The Raven gets to wink at all of that.
It doesn’t make fun of horror because it hates horror. It makes fun of horror because everybody involved understands it.
There is a difference.
The Great Wizard Battle
Eventually the movie gives us what we have clearly been waiting for:
Vincent Price versus Boris Karloff.
Wizard versus wizard.
Craven versus Scarabus.
Two extremely dignified men attempting to destroy each other with increasingly ridiculous magic.
And it is glorious.
They sit across from one another performing spells like two professors who have become irritated during a faculty meeting.
Objects move. Weapons appear. Things transform.
One wizard attacks.
The other counters.
And through it all, Price and Karloff maintain an almost unreasonable amount of dignity.
There are modern movies that would spend millions of dollars turning this scene into an enormous computer-generated spectacle.
The Raven mostly relies on actors, props, optical effects and imagination.
And frankly?
That’s part of why it’s charming.
You aren’t watching because you believe two sorcerers are genuinely fighting.
You’re watching because Vincent Price and Boris Karloff are having a wizard duel.
Sometimes that is enough.
The Sets Deserve Some Credit Too
One of the pleasures of Roger Corman’s Poe movies is the look.
Huge fireplaces.
Stone corridors.
Cobwebs.
Heavy furniture.
Candles.
Staircases that nobody should walk down while wearing a nightgown.
Everything looks like someone decorated using the catalog:
GOTHIC MISERY — FALL COLLECTION.
Corman was famous for making limited budgets stretch farther than they had any right to stretch.
Sets were reused. Props were reused. Costumes were reused. Nothing useful was allowed to die.
Even after The Raven finished shooting, Corman found another use for its sets: he shot material for The Terror before the sets were dismantled. TCM notes that Corman used the standing Raven sets for additional filmmaking almost immediately.
Earl heard about this and has announced that we will never discard another concession sign.
This is not the lesson I wanted him to learn.
Is It Actually Scary?
Not really.
And that’s fine.
There are gothic trappings everywhere.
Graves.
Crypts.
Magic.
A supposedly dead wife.
A sinister castle.
Boris Karloff.
But The Raven isn’t particularly interested in keeping you awake tonight.
It’s interested in entertaining you.
There are moments of darkness, but every time the movie gets too serious, Peter Lorre appears or somebody gets transformed into something ridiculous.
The horror stars themselves become part of the joke.
This is less: Do not enter the haunted castle.
And more: You absolutely should enter the haunted castle because Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre are already inside and something ridiculous is about to happen.
The Cheese Report
We are once again operating at extremely healthy cheese levels.
Tonight we have:
A talking raven.
Sorcerers.
A supposedly dead wife.
A sinister castle.
Peter Lorre covered in feathers.
Magic potions.
Secret plans.
Jack Nicholson.
Boris Karloff being magnificently suspicious.
And a full wizard battle between two horror legends.
There is no responsible nutritional recommendation for this amount of cheese.
Consume anyway.
Does The Raven Hold Up?
If you arrive expecting terror, you may wonder what on earth happened.
If you arrive expecting Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre having enormous fun with a gothic horror comedy…
Yes. Absolutely. That’s the appeal.
The movie doesn’t ask to be taken terribly seriously.
It asks you to enjoy the performers. And what performers they are.
Price can be elegant and funny without turning his character into a clown.
Karloff gives Scarabus just enough menace to keep the story moving.
Lorre seems to be having the time of his life making Bedlo as irritating as possible.
And young Jack Nicholson gets to stand in the middle of three men who had already become horror royalty.
It’s a strange little movie. Which means, naturally, it belongs here.
Earl’s Verdict
Two weeks ago, Vincent Price invited us into a haunted house.
Last week he discovered a creature living on the human spine.
Tonight he is a wizard fighting Boris Karloff while Peter Lorre repeatedly makes the situation worse.
This is exactly the direction Vincent Price Month needed to go.
The Raven isn’t the scariest movie we’ve parked in front of. It may be one of the most fun. It has Poe without worrying very much about Poe. Horror without worrying very much about horror.
And three legendary actors who seem to understand perfectly well that sometimes the best thing you can do with a spooky old castle is enjoy yourself.
So park the car.
Clip the speaker onto the window.
Keep an eye on the ravens.
And should one of them begin speaking in Peter Lorre’s voice…
Do not bring it to Earl.
He has already asked if we can keep one.
Next Friday, Vincent Price Month gets considerably darker.
The jokes disappear.
The castle doors close.
And somewhere outside, a red figure is waiting.
The Masque of the Red Death is coming to the Terror Glow.
Sources & Further Reading
Turner Classic Movies — background on Roger Corman’s Poe cycle, the cast, Richard Matheson’s loose adaptation, and production history. Turner Classic Movies: The Raven (1963)
AFI Catalog — production notes and cast information for The Raven.
https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23330-THE-RAVEN