Review: The Raven

Brilliant surgeon and avid Poe fan Bela Lugosi has an infatuation with one of his patients (Irene Ware), despite her having a fiancé and a disapproving father (Samuel S. Hinds playing the latter). Meanwhile, a wanted murderer (Boris Karloff) arrives at Lugosi’s home asking the famed surgeon to alter his face so he can escape his misdeeds. Lugosi agrees, but disfigures Karloff’s face and forces him into killing for him before he’ll correct the deformity.

 

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff team up for another barely connected Edgar Allen Poe adaptation, and this 1935 film from director Louis Friedlander/Lew Landers (“I Was a Prisoner on Devil’s Island”, “Return of the Vampire”), and screenwriter David Boehm (the semi-classic weepie “A Guy Named Joe”) is another winner. In fact, the only flaws here are the fact that the script is practically devoid of any connection to Poe (if anything there’s more “Pit and the Pendulum” than “The Raven”), and it’s a bit slight in length. Otherwise, this one’s jolly good fun and certainly as good as – if not better – than the 1963 version from Roger Corman, also starring Karloff (and also bearing little resemblance to Poe).

 

In what might just be his most perfectly cast role, Bela Lugosi appears to be in good health and gives a really good performance. He’s a real cruel, evil bastard in this one, perhaps his finest hour on screen. His respectable veneer drops gradually, and the longer the film goes on the crazier and more evil he becomes. You can’t wait for him to meet his warranted grisly demise. Boris Karloff plays the disfigured man who gets duped by Lugosi, and although the makeup has dated he still looks suitably horrific after Lugosi cuts his face up. The great thing about Karloff is his innate ability to make you feel sympathetic towards his ‘monsters’. Here he’s only a monster in visage, and although he begins the film as a hardened criminal, you can’t help but feel sorry for his plight. What a terrific, versatile actor. It’s amazing watching them here as Karloff is submissive to Lugosi, whereas in 1945’s “The Body Snatcher” it would be Karloff holding all the power over a foolish Lugosi. Character actors Samuel S. Hinds, and especially a hilarious Ian Wolfe (as a wimp named ‘Pinky’) are good to have around, too.

 

A film full of Poe name-dropping without any real connection to his original story. That said, this is a solidly entertaining, extremely well-acted tale nonetheless. Lugosi has never been more effective on screen.

 

Rating: B-