The Raven **** (1935, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Irene Ware, Lester Matthews, Inez Courtney, Spencer Charters, Ian Wolfe) – Classic Movie Review 2677

The great Thirties fright team of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are happily re-paired for the highly estimable 1935 Universal Studios horror item The Raven, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem.

Director Lew Landers re-assembles the great Thirties fright team of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, who are happily re-paired here after The Black Cat (1934) for this highly estimable and indeed esteemed 1935 Universal Studios horror item The Raven, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem.

Lugosi is on excellent form as crazed Doctor Vollin, a brilliant but eccentric neurological surgeon who is coaxed out of retirement by wealthy Judge Thatcher (Samuel S Hinds) to save the life of his daughter Jean (Irene Ware), a dancer who is crippled and brain damaged in a car crash.

Dr Vollin restores Jean to complete health, but schemes to kidnap her and torture and kill her fiancé and father in his Poe-inspired dungeon, complete with a torture chamber in his basement. Then he tortures his house guests one by one when he can’t marry her.

Karloff is also on his habitual good form as gangster Edmond Bateman, the wanted criminal and escaped murderer on the run from the police, whom Vollin recruits and turns into a mutant hideous subservient monster to do his dirty work. [Spoiler alert] Eventually, however, Bateman tries to stop even worse things from happening.

Director Louis Friedlander (as he is billed here) later changed his name to Lew Landers. The makeup is designed by legendary Universal genius Jack P Pierce.

Also in the cast are Lester Matthews, Inez Courtney, Spencer Charters, Ian Wolfe, Maidel Turner, Al Ferguson, Nina Golden, Jonathan Hale, Arthur Hoyt, Walter Miller, Bud Osborne, Madeline Talcott and Helen Ware.

It was remade by Roger Corman in 1963 as The Raven, with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Hazel Court, and Boris Karloff still, among the cast.

Billed as ‘suggested by’ Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem The Raven, excerpts of which are quoted in the film, it was adapted from an original screenplay by David Boehm. At least seven writers worked on the script between August 1934 and March 1935. Boehm turned in three screenplays for The Raven to Universal and he is the only screenwriter listed in the credits.

It is the last of Universal’s trio of Poe films Universal Pictures released in the 1930s, following Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Black Cat (1934).

Karloff was paid $10,000 and Lugosi was paid $5,000.

Lew Landers directed the 16-day shoot, which began on 20 March 1935. Filming was completed on schedule on 5 April 1935 at a cost of $115,209.91, which was $5,000 over the budget.

The interfering heavy hand of the Production Code Administration was hovering over the production, and even so, the film was banned in several territories, including China, the Netherlands, and Ontario and British Columbia in Canada.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2677

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