The Raven 1963 Horror Movie Review

I am a huge Vincent Price fan. I first discovered him late at night on AMC, while watching, I believe it was, The Haunted Palace. There’s just something about Vincent Price that quickly grabbed me and made me a huge fan. Now, well into my massive Vincent Price DVD collection I’m going to review one that I got for Christmas, The Comedy of Terrors / The Raven double feature. However, I am only going to review The Raven, because I’ve yet to watch The Comedy of Terrors.



I’ve seen all of the Roger Corman / Vincent Price poe films except this one and The Tomb Of Ligeia (which I also received for Christmas). I knew that this was a comedy, rather than a horror film, and already knew Peter Lorre was in the film. I myself didn’t enjoy the Tales of Terror film with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre at all, so I had some doubts about The Raven. However The Raven also starred horror great Boris Karloff, and a very young Jack Nicholson.



Into the first twenty minutes or so of the film, I’d say is pretty boring. Dr. Craven (Vincent Price) is in his chamber, reciting the Edgar Allan Poe poem while a raven flies into his room. It turns out that the raven is actually Dr. Bedlo (Peter Lorre), and he has been turned into a raven by an evil sorcerer, Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Craven then proceeds to change Bedlo back into his true, human like form. This is at least 35 minutes into the movie and is pretty boring.



Bedlo convinces Craven that he had seen the spirit of Craven’s dead wife roaming the halls of Scarabus’ castle, trying to convince Craven to go back to the castle with him to help Bedlo get back his bag of tricks. Yadda, yadda, yadda.. the film finally picks up and gets entertaining when they reach Scarabus’ castle. Boris Karloff is great as the decieving, evil Dr. Scarabus. My favorite part of the film is the long battle scene between the two wizards, Craven and Scarabus.



The humor is pretty corny (although I’m sure it was a bit humorous in the 60’s) and if you’ve seen a few of the other Roger Corman Poe films you’d notice alot of the same scenes used in this film (the burning castle especially). In the end, although not my favorite Vincent Price or Corman Poe film, I did enjoy this this film very much. Recommended for hardcore classic Vincent Price fans, but not for people looking to get scared.