Corman/Poe Month: 5. The Raven (1963)

I’ve already addressed the inherent challenge in trying to adapt Edgar Allen Poe to feature film, namely that the filmmaker is inevitably stuck having to add new stuff to stretch out the original, brief source material. With that in mind, I ask you honestly: how on Earth would YOU try to get a whole movie out of “The Raven?” I mean, seriously, I know it’s the most iconic thing Poe ever wrote, but what even happens in that poem? Seriously, what events actually take place? An emo dude sits in his room feeling sad about his dead girlfriend, and then a bird flies up and makes fun of him. The End. Where’s the movie in that? At least “The Pit and The Pendulum,” as short as it is, has some sense of physical danger to generate tension. How is anybody supposed to make a full narrative, let alone one for a visual medium like film, out of “The Raven?” Well, if you’re Richard Matheson and Roger Corman hires you to do just that, apparently the answer is “WIZARDS!”

Yup, wizards. The Raven is a full-on fantasy romp, and this is where my issues with it begin. Sure, all the previous Poe flicks has at least a hint of the supernatural about them, but they were always fundamentally mysterious about what was "really" happening. At the most, it was ambiguous whether the spoopy goings on were actually going on at all or just in the protagonist’s head, and even the more overt films still presented the supernatural as a fundamentally unknowable force that was bigger and stranger than the characters could ever hope to understand. But in The Raven? nope. Here we have sorcerers and warlocks just straight up flicking spells at each other on command like it’s no big thing. It’s a fundamentally different concept, and one that’s compounded by my OTHER, even bigger issue with The Raven. When I called it a “fantasy ROMP” earlier, I wasn’t being facetious. The Raven is a comedy, and I mean a COMEDY comedy. Yes, Tales of Terror went for laughs in “The Black Cat,” but that was a knowing black comedy that still got ghoulish when it needed to be. The Raven, on the other hand, doesn’t have a scary bone in its body. Quite frankly, it’s just a few musical numbers away from being an especially unusual episode of The Monkees. I’d say The Raven feels like Walt Disney’s take on Edgar Allan Poe, but Disney’s wizards and witches are WAY spookier than anything here.

And this is where I have to make a clear distinction between my personal, gut reactions and the objective merits of the film itself. See, just taken on its own, The Raven isn’t a bad movie at all.  I know it isn't. In fact, there’s a case to be made that it’s one of Corman’s more crowd-pleasing Poe flicks. And let’s be honest here, for everything I just said about The Raven not being scary, it’s not like any of Corman’s other Poe movies actually ARE. I mean, come on. It’s Roger Corman working for American International in the early 60s. It’s not like he was every gonna make a Night of the Living Dead or anything. I’ll freely admit that I watch these movies as comfort food, not because I think any of them will legitimately spook me. And yet… I dunno. Maybe it’s the fact that the previous movies, lightweight as they may be, still clearly take themselves seriously. Ask any connoisseurs of bad movies, and they’ll tell you that a serious movie that fails to be serious is infinitely less painful than a funny movie that fails to make you laugh. And while I wouldn’t call The Raven a bad comedy, it DOES run on a broad, zany sense of humor that just isn't to my personal tastes. Speaking my personal tastes, I’m also not as big a fan of straight Fantasy as I am Gothic Horror, so the shift from haunted houses to Hogwarts doesn’t sit well with me either. Once that genre shift and the tonal shift combine, they result in The Raven just feeling like a movie that was made for somebody who ISN'T me… and when we're five movies deep into a franchise I've been totally down with up to this point, that’s an odd feeling to suddenly get.

But again, if I step outside my personal tastes for a second, I can see how a lot of people would have a lot of fun with The Raven. Clearly drawing inspiration from how well “The Black Cat” turned out, this movie teams up Price and Peter Lorre again, as the wizards Craven and Bedlo respectively. The later seeks out the former for help after being transformed into the titular raven by a third wizard, Scarabus, whom Craven soon comes to believe may have captured the soul of his late wife Lenore… and you have now heard everything this movie has in common with the poem. The rest is a goofy, borderline slapsticky affair as Craven and Bedlo, with their respective daughter and son in tow, confront Scarabus, only for a flurry of wacky plot twists and double crosses to ensue.

Let’s dive straight into the biggest plus: the cast. Price and Lorre continue to work very well off of each other. In fact, that chemistry almost works to the film’s detriment. There’s a couple of scenes where it's clear that Lorre is ad libing and price is just playing along, and like most improvisation in movies, it probably goes on longer that it ought to. But still, they’re clearly having fun, in a way I can see being infectious. And speaking of fun, big bad Scarabus is played by Boris Karloff, who’s a delight even in the worst of films. Here’s he’s perfect as the Obviously Evil Despite Being As Friendly as Humanly Possible bad guy, and he bounces off of Price and Lorre just as well as they bounce off each other. (Well, in the final cut they do. Apparently Karloff wasn’t a fan of Lorre’s ad libing, but the old pro sure doesn’t let it show). As for the rest of the cast, the ladies are giving a bit of a thankless task. Olive Sturgess as Craven’s daughter Estelle is basically just there to be pleasant, supportive, and in peril, which she’s fine but forgettable at. Hazel Court is more fun as Lenore… once the movie’s done pretending that she’s dead (um, spoilers, I guess?), so that kind of limits what she has to work with for most of the film. Still, she seems to be having a lot more fun here than she did frumping it up back in The Premature Burial. But the real surprise is Bedlo’s son Rexford, played by a FREAKISHLY young Jack Nicholson. If you’re of the generation that only knows Nicholson as That Crazy Old Guy, seeing him in this movie feels like looking at the dude’s baby pictures. He’s not bad either, giving a performance that’s just… off in ways that are hard to explain but memorable nonetheless. It probably helps that Nicholson and Lorre legitimately didn’t like each other, which comes across a lot more than the tension with Karloff, but kind of works in the context of the film.

So yeah, there’s plenty to like in The Raven, especially if you like the doofier side of 60s comedy… but it just doesn't work for me. In my own defense, though, I think there's more going with my reaction than simply the tone being something other than what I wanted. Corman’s cheapo production values aren’t really up to the task of on-screen wizardry, so a lot of the “magic” is fairly underwhelming. The climactic wizardry battle between Craven and Scarabus in particular is a real drag, boiling down to two guys sitting around while the stage crew shine lights on them and throw stuff around. So we're not not exactly talking Gandalf and Saruman here. Also, and I'm definitely drifting back into personal gripes, but by this point Corman’s budget conscious recycling really starts to show in the set designs. Somebody just dropping in on The Raven by itself would never notice, but when I watch all the Poe Cycle in order, this is around the point where it really can't help thinking “Oh, that hallway is from The Pit and The Pendulum, and those stairs are from House of Usher, and there’s that freaking burning barn footage again.” In fact, maybe that sense of fatigue is itself the reason why I’m just not in the mood for a zany comedy? I mean, it’s probably not the main reason, but it can’t help.

Lest you come away with the wrong impression, I do feel I should stress that I’m not opposed to the concept of a Gothic Horror Comedy. In fact, just a few months after The Raven, American International released The Comedy of Terrors, which also stared Price, Lorre and Karloff (not to mention bringing back Basil Rathbone and Joyce Jameson from Tales of Terror as well). Comedy of Terrors is even more overtly comedic than The Raven, it’s right up there in the title for heaven’s sake, but it’s also a much MEANER breed of comedy than The Raven. And wouldn’t you know it? I like Comedy of Terrors a whooooooole lot more than The Raven. And the strangest thing is, Richard Matheson wrote BOTH of these movies! So I guess there’s nobody to blame but Corman for this one.

To conclude with a complete aside: Roger Corman’s Poe movies aren’t even the first attempt to do an actor-driven Poe franchise, as Bela Lugosi had stared in a series of Poe flicks for Universal in the 30s. In fact, a few of them also stared Boris Karloff, including The Raven. I bring this up because, if you can believe it, Universal's take on The Raven has even LESS to do with the poem than Corman’s version, and yet I like it a lot better. While quite loopy in its own way, the 30's Raven still takes itself relatively seriously, or at least is more straight-faced about its absurdity than the later film. It’s also a rare moment in Lugosi and Karloff’s overlapping filmography in which ol’ Bela legitimately gives a better performance than Boris. Normally it's Karloff who acts circles around poor Lugosi, so seeing the roles reversed is a sight worth seeing all on it’s own. So yeah, while I still make a point of watching it every year, there’s a lot of other movies I’d personally recommend over Roger Corman’s The Raven. And if you think I digressed a lot here, just wait until we get to the NEXT one…