The Raven

1963 horror comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: It's exactly like Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," except for the wizard battles.

After a psychedelic opener with these swirls of color and a raven silhouette, we meet our protagonist, a man who has lost his Lenore just like in the Poe poem. A voice-over reads about 40% of that poem. That man is the great Vincent Price, but he's not exactly doing any great acting here as a wizard who is making a cartoonish raven pattern in the air next to his big telescope by moving his eyebrows and hands around just like you'd expect a wizard in 1963 to do. Price's outfit is super goofy, and his acting is really pretty terrible. I probably should have known that this was a comedy sooner than I was able to figure that out, probably around the third time Price walked into that aforementioned giant telescope. But after seeing a handful of the other Corman Poe adaptations, none which you'd call comedies, I suppose I can be forgiven for not figuring that out.

Other than the comedic stylings of a goofily-dressed Vincent Price and all that wizard stuff, this really does seem to follow the famous narrative poem. Price laments the loss of his love Lenore who'll return nevermore (though he keeps her in a casket on the premises), he hears a knock, he finds nothing there, he hears another knock, and he enjoys the company of a talking raven. You'd think that the titular bird's arrival would make this more like the poem; however, that's not the case as this bird starts talking in a silly voice that I could almost recognize, saying a whole lot more than "Nevermore." In fact, he starts blabbering about a rival wizard, and he talks Price into going to his dead father's laboratory (or whatever a wizard laboratory is called) to whip up a potion, one that includes "the entrails of a troubled horse," to turn the guy back into a man. He manages to turn him into a man with bird arms. Or wings, I guess. And you know who that man is? It's freakin' Peter Lorre! And Peter Lorre is really not very good in this at all.

So you've got Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. Who else is in this movie? Well, you've got Boris Karloff as that rival wizard. And then there's Jack Nicholson playing Peter Lorre's son. It's all a very complicated story that I wouldn't want to spoil, but suffice it to say, it drifts so far from Poe's narrative that I completely forgot it was supposed to be an adaptation of it.

By the time you get to the giant wizard battle at the end, this thing's gone completely off the rails. Add in that constant music, and it's all pretty insane. Is it funny? No, not really. Most of the jokes don't work at all although the performers are giving it their all. Does the narrative work? Well, that's probably a negative. Still, it's fun to watch these great actors goof around, and the added knowledge that this claims to be an adaptation of a poem about a lamenting guy being taunted by a raven, a story that doesn't contain a single fucking wizard, makes it even better.