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The Raven Movie Review

The Raven is a 1963 Gothic comedy horror film directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. It’s a silly, but charming flick.

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“Afraid my dear?

There’s nothing to be afraid of“

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Sorcerer Erasmus Craven helps Dr. Beldo, a wizard who is part-raven, get his revenge on Dr. Scarabus when he learns that the spirit of his dead wife might be in his castle. This movie was called The Raven, but it has nothing to do with Poe’s titular poem. In fact, this is the only Roger Corman-Vincent Price movie in the Poe cycle to not be based on any preexisting literary material, but is entirely original and also much more comedic in approach.

If you go into this movie expecting a horror flick, you are bound to be disappointed. Yes, it has some of those atmospheric elements, but they are so few and far in-between as the movie very clearly favored a comedic approach. It’s a Gothic comedy that made fun of these types of stories with an irreverent plot and silly plot scenarios.

The main reason to see this movie lies of course in the interplay between its famous genre actors. Vincent Price is delightfully over-the-top in a role that he clearly had a lot of fun playing. The female characters are solid, though far from essential. There is also the presence of a very young Jack Nicholson in a lesser role, but it was still very interesting seeing him so early in his career.

The other standouts are Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Lorre was especially endearing as this constantly frustrated sorcerer and the scenes where he was the raven were especially delightful how ridiculous they were. Karloff is also quite good, though not as funny as the other two men, but that final duel was the most memorable sequence in the film as it was constantly entertaining while being playful too.

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The Raven has solid costumes, sets and VFX for the time, though a couple of scenes looked rough. There is a lot of campiness to the proceedings here, which I appreciated, but for those who don’t gravitate toward these B-movie thrills, it may be a chore to sit through. It is a film that is surprisingly fantastical in its imagery with so much magic present, which I definitely liked, but had it been less silly and comedic, it would have been more timeless. The pacing was quite off in the mid section, but the rest of it was pretty engaging.