The Raven **** (1963, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Jack Nicholson) – Classic Movie Review 2678

This spoofy 1963 gothic fantasy horror movie is one of the best of director Roger Corman’s several Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, supposedly inspired by the same Poe poem that produced the 1935 version of The Raven. It doesn’t manage much of the advertised terror, but it is plenty camp and macabre enough.

It boasts delightfully tongue-in-cheek performances by Boris Karloff (as Dr Scarabus), Vincent Price (as Dr Erasmus Craven) and Peter Lorre (as Dr Adolphus Bedlo) as rival 15th-century magicians. And Richard Matheson provides a genuinely funny screenplay, with plenty of rich comic ideas to sustain the movie’s short 86-minute running time easily.

Lorre is a hoot as a drunken conjurer, a cowardly fool turned into a talking raven by Karloff’s evil Dr Scarabus. But one evening Bedlo comes to Dr Craven for help to change him back into a human. He also tells Craven that his long-lost wife Lenore (Hazel Court), whom he loved greatly and thought dead, is in fact now living with the despised Scarabus.

Hazel Court gives an attractive performance as the desirable heroine Lenore Craven, while a remarkably young and innocent-looking Jack Nicholson (aged 26) shows no sign of great, Oscar-winning things to come as Lorre’s effete son, Rexford Bedlo. The cast also includes Olive Sturgess, William Baskin, Connie Wallace and Aaron Saxon.

This cheaply made but good-looking movie is nicely designed by set designer Daniel Haller and beautifully and lovingly photographed by cinematographer Floyd Crosby.

Karloff also starred (as Edmond Bateman) with Bela Lugosi in the largely unrelated 1935 version of The Raven.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2678

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com