The Raven
1935
Action / Crime / Horror

The Raven
1935
Action / Crime / Horror
Plot summary
A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiancé to his isolated castle-like home, where he has created a torture chamber with the intent of torturing them for having 'tortured' him.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
A Very Controversial Horror . You Have To Remember The Context Of When It Was Made
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in The Raven was a most thrilling horror classic to me!
While I had watched them in The Body Snatcher years back, this is the first time I've seen Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff together as equals in one of their Universal features. In this one, Lugosi plays Dr. Richard Vollin who gets called out of retirement by one Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds) to heal his daughter Jean (Irene Ware) from a car accident. He does and instantly becomes smitten with her which becomes obvious to her father when he looks at them together. When Vollin admits to it, the judge forbids him from seeing her again especially since she's engaged to Dr. Jerry Halden (Lester Matthews). That doesn't sit well with the doctor who cured her so when escaped convict Edmond Bateman (Karloff) drops in, Vollin offers a quid-pro-quo...This was quite thrilling from beginning to end especially with all the references to many Edgar Allan Poe works and contraptions especially the one depicted in "The Pit and the Pendulum". Director Louis Friedlander really puts the stops that truly had me riveted the whole way through. And the score is just what one would expect from these melodramatic old school horror movies of this period. As old-fashioned as this movie may seem to some modern viewers, to me this was still an edge-of-your-seat thriller that holds up today. So on that note, I very highly recommend this version of The Raven.