“Shall I ever see the rare and radiant Lenore again?” — Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Prince)
“How they Hell should I know?” — Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre)
This exchange comes from Roger Corman’s 1963 film, The Raven, and it pretty much epitomizes the film. Very loosely based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven was one of the many Poe adaptations that Corman did with Vincent Price. As opposed to the other films in Corman’s Poe cycle, The Raven was a flat-out comedy, one that parodied the other films in the cycle. Reportedly, Peter Lorre improvised his response to Vincent Price’s question about Lenore. In fact, Lorre improvised a good deal of his performance and his jokes sometimes even took Corman by surprise. As a result and despite the fact that Richard Matheson did write a script for the film, The Raven is one of those films that feels like it was made up while the camera was rolling.
The Raven is a film about three sorcerers who are always fighting and arguing with each other. Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Price) spends his time mourning the late Lenore. The evil Dr. Scarabus (a frail-looking Boris Karloff) has his own castle where he lives with the ghost of the late Lenore (Hazel Court). Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre) is a sarcastic ne’er-do-well who saw Lenore in Scarabus’s castle and was transformed into a talking raven as a result.
In raven form, Dr. Bedlo flies over to Craven’s castle and convinces Craven to transform him back into human form. After informing Craven that Scarabus has Lenore’s ghost in his castle, the heart-broken Craven decides to head over to Scarabus’s castle and get some answers. Accompanying the group is Craven’s daughter, Estelle (Olive Sturgess) and Bedlo’s son, Rexford (Jack Nicholson, looking somewhat lost in the role of a boring young man).
At the castle, Scarabus puts on an act of being a friendly and gracious host but the opposite soon turns out to be true. In fact, the entire castle is full of secrets and it quickly turns out that hardly anyone — with the exception of Estelle and Rexford — are who they actually claim to be. It leads to a battle in magic between Craven and Scarabus. I nearly described their battle as being “epic” but that’s probably not the right world. It’s epic by the standards of Roger Corman but actually, the big battle is just as jokey as the rest of the film.
The Raven is definitely not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously. One gets the feeling that Corman knew that the presence of Price, Karloff, and Lorre would make the film a success no matter what the film was like so he decided to have some fun with it. (Price and definitely Lorre appear to have been in on the joke while Karloff was perhaps a bit less so.) To be honest, the film’s only earnest moments come courtesy of Oliva Sturgess and Jack Nicholson but, because Nicholson is Nicholson, you watch those earnest moments waiting for Rexford to arch an eyebrow or flash that devilish grin. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. Jack is pretty boring here.
The Raven, if we’re going to be honest, is probably too jokey for its own good but it’s still hard to resist the charm of Price, Lorre, and Karloff. The film is a chance to see three horror icons acting opposite each other and, as a result, it’s a fun film for horror fans. Vincent Price breaks the fourth wall at the end of the film and it’s hard not to love it.
