The Raven (1963)

The Raven (1963)

Dir. Roger Corman

Written by Richard Matheson

Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess, Jack Nicholson

How in the world do you make a movie based on The Raven? Never mind that it’s just a hair over a thousand words long; it’s also one of the least narrative, least cinematic scenarios you could possibly imagine as the basis for a motion picture. Here is everything that happens in the entire poem (spoilers for The Raven): A sad guy sits in a chair, hears knocking, walks over to the door, finds no one there, walks over to the window, a bird flies in and sits on a statue above his door, and he yells at it a bit, while the bird responds by saying “nevermore” six times. The end. That’s it, that’s all that happens. Even trying to fill it out by, I dunno, flashing back to the backstory with Lenore --which would be just the worst-- you got maybe 15 minutes of screen time in there, and that’s if you reaaally drag it out. So it’s actually kind of ballsy that the movie starts burning through the poem from frame one. And not just by having some guy sitting around once upon a midnight dreary, but with an actual recitation. As Vincent Price (MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH) samples each syllable of Poe’s verse like a fine brandy, while some kind of psychedelic slideshow plays in the background, it’s almost bold enough to make you wonder, wow, are they really gonna go for it?

  

They make it all of three verses into the poem before abandoning it.

But to its credit, the film at least assumes we know the poem well enough that it’s a big laugh moment when a ‘stately Raven of the saintly days of yore’ does indeed interrupt Price’s melancholy musings to answer him... but doesn’t say what you expect it to. Instead, it’s a sassy talking animal sidekick. What the fuck is this, Dr. Dolittle?*

Fortunately, the talking bird is quickly transformed into a man -- of sorts, anyway. By which I mean both that the transformation is not complete (leaving him with bird wings and a tail) and that the object of its transformation --one Peter Lorre (THE COMEDY OF TERRORS)-- was by this point looking less like a human and more like a gloomy half-reassembled humpty-dumpty. Lennon may have been the Walrus,** I don’t know, but I can damn well tell you that Lorre is the Eggman.

            The “Raven,” it seems, is actually Dr. Bedlo, a surly alcoholic wizard who has been transformed into an animal by his powerful and sinister colleague Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff, THE RAVEN [1935]), with whom Price’s mild-mannered conjurer also has some bad blood due to Scarabus’s usurping of his proper place in a wizards’ society formerly headed by his fath… wait just a damned minute, what the fuck? Wizards society? **ejects disc, inspects label** It says THE RAVEN. Did they send me the wrong disc or something? Is this like that time my buddy watched THE GODFATHER on VHS and mistakenly put the second tape*** on first, and watched it all the way to the end before realizing that no, that opening scene without any titles where James Cann gets machine-gunned to death out of the blue was not some kind of arty, intentionally confusing way to throw the audience off-balance?

            But no, there is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. This adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s timeless rumination on madness and loss is a silly, slapstick comedy about feuding wizards, set specifically in the 16th century for absolutely no discernible reason. Granted, adapting The Raven into a movie was always an impossible task, but equal amounts of shame and respect to screenwriter Richard Matheson (THE COMEDY OF TERRORS,**** which also featured Price, Lorre, and Karloff) for just giving up and writing something totally unrelated and then having the balls to type “The Raven, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe” at the top. Of course, he and Roger Corman had been up to this sort of chicanery for some time already, having churned out four Poe adaptations in the three years since 1960’s THE HOUSE OF USHER,***** none of them likely to exactly overwhelm a viewer with their strict fidelity to the source material. But reciting the first three stanzas of a poem and then throwing the whole thing out the window and making up some malarky about wizards is pretty bold, even for the kind of director who would finish a film and then notice the sets hadn’t been torn down and Boris Karloff’s bus hadn’t arrived yet, and take that as inspiration to squeeze an entire second movie out of them (which Corman would do following this very film, resulting in THE TERROR just a few months later).

            Anyway, my point is you either laugh that off and enjoy THE RAVEN for what it is, or you start to notice what it isn’t and gradually descend into violent madness, culminating in you becoming a deranged gimmick slasher who uses a trained raven to peck out the eyes of your hapless victims while you babble at them about magic in Vincent Price’s voice. I obviously chose the former route, but if you settle on the latter, more power to you. In fact, I’d kind of like to see that movie.

            Say, remember how in TWIXT Val Kilmer plays a hack horror writer named Hall Baltimore who solves a vampiric mystery in his dreams with the help of Edgar Allan Poe? Well, I’m thinking sequel, baby.

            So! Yes. Right. Where was I? Oh yes, THE RAVEN. So, THE RAVEN is about as much of a horror movie as it is a David Lean epic, but as a comedy, it's pretty endearing. There’s not a tremendous amount of plot; basically, Dr. Beldo enlists Price’s Dr. Craven (anticipating the trend of naming horror characters after Wes Craven an impressive nine years before anyone would know who that was) to challenge his adversary Dr. Scarabus, an errand which Craven is reluctant to become engaged in until Bedlo reveals that while he was at Scarabus's castle, he noticed someone who looks an awful lot like Craven’s lost wife Lenore (Hazel Court, THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, looking amused, but mostly content to let her cleavage do the acting, which it manages admirably). Craven is skeptical, but agrees to go along, and they’re accompanied by Craven’s daughter (Olive Sturgess, The Bob Cummings Show) and Bedlo’s son (Jack Nicholson, MARS ATTACKS!) so that there are occasionally at least a few people under the age of 60 on-screen. Once they arrive at Scarabus’s garishly-decorated abode (the quartet of life-sized dragon statues which periodically belch fire is admittedly attention-grabbing, but a little gauche), it’s a simple matter of watching three old hams indulge their silliest inclinations as actors while we wait for a magic-wielding special effects show for a finale.

            It’s pretty fluffy stuff, of course, a scenario which barely remembers to coagulate into anything resembling a story, let alone insist on any serious stakes. But it matters very little when you have Price, Lorre, and Karloff, none of them with so much as a fleeting thought towards subtlety, working to entertain as diligently as they ever have in a trio of careers which were devoted nearly exclusively to that goal (Nicholson, of course, would become a ham at least as shameless as any of them, but he was still to young here to really cut loose******). It helps that they don’t step on each other’s toes; the three leads could all have been interchangeably cast in any of these roles, but each part is broadly archetypal enough to allow its respective performer plenty of room to make it distinct. Karloff embodies the nefarious matinee villain with impish glee, while Price, playing the good guy for once, brings a kind of bemused, unassuming sweetness which nicely complements Karloff’s primary-colored cartoon villainy. Lorre, depressed and struggling with weight and morphine and disappointment over his diminishing career prospects, adds just a shade of nuance to his belligerent, craven bum of a wizard, if only by virtue of looking tired and defeated even through his most bellicose scenes. Every syllable seems to demand an impossible effort that he’s just barely able to summon at the last minute. Which may be uncomfortably close to the truth; he was dead just a little over a year later. But he must have been having at least a little fun -- multiple sources claim he improvised a handful of the film’s funniest lines.

            The script offers some urbanely funny lines on its own, but Corman’s direction cultivates a languid hang-out vibe that leaves it awfully slack and leisurely for a comedy, despite some able slapstick. There are some legitimate chuckles in there, but it’s more ingratiating than hilarious. Probably not a great trade, but certainly an acceptable consolation prize, because with Karloff, Price, and Lorre nearly always on-screen, it’s never less than watchable. The impeccable cast is aided in that regard by an unusually opulent-looking production, featuring colorful, gaudy costumes, the impressively expansive sets which Corman would repurpose (albeit in far more spartan form) in THE TERROR, and an unexpectedly nifty special effects bonanza at the climax, showcasing a range of charmingly hand-crafted magic tricks which, while never remotely convincing, are so finely-tuned to play to the film and the actors’ sense of humor that they pack more punch than most 200 million dollar productions do today.

            The end result is a film which is very much not Poe, but very much is Roger Corman: chintzy and campy and a little lumpy, but also far too scrappy and imaginative and committed to entertaining to resist. Corman would later claim, “Overall I would say we had as good a spirit on THE RAVEN as any film I've ever worked on,” and although you always have to take Corman with a grain of salt (he’s always one hustle ahead of himself), here I’m inclined to not only believe him, but to feel confident that spirit is visible on-screen. Between Price, Karloff, Lorre, Corman and Matheson, this is about as pristine example as the medium has ever provided of a group of consummate pros working squarely in the center of their comfort zone and just fucking around having fun. Would this team ever rise to such heights again? Quoth the Raven “Neverm-- nah, I’m just fucking with you, even I’ve got too much dignity to end on that note. Which is, not coincidentally, the exact note the movie ends on. THE RAVEN is a movie made by people utterly without shame --you know, the kind of people who would adapt The Raven into an 86-minute comedy about wizards-- but if you’re willing to find that charming rather than mortifying, the film has quite a lot of charm indeed.

PS: I recently visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, and noticed that they had an original poster for this movie prominently displayed in their reading room. It was, however, a poster for the film’s German release, under the title DER RABE, leaving one to the daunting task of trying to surmise how this confusing montage of magic spells and flying wizards would be interpreted by any visitor to the museum not familiar with the poem’s German title. 

* Please note my demure use of italics rather than caps for that title, to subtly suggest to you that I, as a gentleman of class and erudition, am referring to the series of 1920s children's novels by British author Hugh Lofting, and not the shrill and exhausting comedies of the same name starring Rex Harrison (1967) and Eddie Murphy (1998). 

** Just kidding, I think we all know who the walrus was #WalrusYes.

*** Only 90’s kids will remember!

**** Matheson, of course, accumulated a solid portfolio of screenplays over the years, but was best known for his horror novels and short stories, most notably the immortal I Am Legend.

***** Matheson wrote only three of those four; 1962’s THE PREMATURE BURIAL was a Ray Russell / Charles Beaumont script. Corman and Beaumont would get arguably even more lackadaisical about the source material the next year, when they put out an adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward under the name THE HAUNTED PALACE and called it a Poe adaptation! Now that’s just confusing!

****** Although a sequence which finds him possessed and furiously driving a carriage does give a hint at what’s to come, what with his unhinged shouting and all. But mostly he seems a little self-conscious here, which is understandable given how miserable he is at the old-fashioned dialogue which plays to exactly none of his strengths.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	The Macabre Masterpiece of Terror! There are lies, damned lies, and Roger Corman taglines.
TITLE ACCURACY	Spectacularly inaccurate, almost stunningly so
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	In only the meanest theoretical way.
SEQUEL?	None, though part of Corman’s “Poe cycle” which ran from 1960-1965 and included eight adaptations.
REMAKE?	No, although there is both a 1935 film of the same name and a dire 2012 version.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Wizards? Poe Adaptations, I guess.
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None. Well, Jack Nicholson would go on to be kind a big deal eventually I guess.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	All.
NUDITY?	None
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Some Raven biting, and later a bat
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Zombie, actually, in a weird scene that is never referenced again
POSSESSION?	Breifly, yes
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Bird into Peter Lorre! And back again!
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	If you’re going to lie about adapting one of literature’s greatest triumphs into a schlock b-movie, at least lie big.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

Dir Emilio Miraglia

Written by Rabio Pittorru, Emilio Miraglia

Starring Barbara Bouchet, Ugo Pagliai, Marina Malfatti, Sybil Danning

WARNING: WE TALK BRIEFLY BUT BLUNTLY ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THIS ONE. DON’T BLAME ME, BLAME ITALY.

THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES is a pleasantly convoluted, handsomely appointed giallo with what may well be the single most quintessentially giallo title ever designed by man. I guess I’d feel a little safer if there was an animal in there somewhere (“The Red Serpent Kills Seven Times”?), and I admit that it has to contend with the existence of the greatest single title of any artistic work, any genre (YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY), but just from a technical standpoint it’s hard to imagine how you could top it. Baroque, sensual, and suggesting an obscure sort of poetry, while at the same time being utterly indecipherable nonsense (a description which, now that I think about it, would be a fitting conspectus for the genre itself). All the more stunning, then, that THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES is a rare giallo with a title that gets satisfactorily explained within the first five minutes, and actually literally describes the events of the movie! Except the "queen" part, I guess, I don’t know what that means, but they do say it on-screen.

 Before we’re introduced to anyone who may or may not kill seven times, the threat of brutal violence is already in the air: the movie begins with five whole minutes of escalating savagery as a little blonde girl and a little brunette girl violently contest the ownership of a doll (who, of course, is dressed in red) like they're auditioning for the damned fight scene in THEY LIVE. As their duel escalates from playful sibling rivalry to BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, their grandfather (Rudolf Schündler, SUSPIRIA*) intervenes. He seems a little shaken by what he’s seen, (though not nearly enough considering his intervention was necessitated by one of them grabbing a knife) and subsequently regales them with a calming story about their ancestors, whom a lavish oil painting depicts in a similar murderous confrontation (the children immediately identify with them). “Now then. The explanation of that awful picture. I swore you’d never be told, however, perhaps you’re old enough now,” says Grandpa (they look to be around 10, so I guess he didn’t have to swear they’d never be told for all that long).

It seems that the two women in the portrait were also sisters, who we’re told, “over the years... have become known as the Red Queen and the Black Queen.” Long story short, Grandpa breathlessly exposits that the two hated each other from childhood, and that the Red Queen was a real bitch, and the Black Queen finally stabbed her seven times in revenge. Pretty routine stuff, I bet pretty much every Italian family that resides in a menacing, dilapidated castle has a couple stories like that. What gives this one legs is that subsequently the Red Queen returned from the grave and committed seven murders -- six of random, hapless strangers, and the seventh, the Black Queen herself. The origin of the curious royal nicknames here will remain obscure, but there you have it: less than five minutes in and we already have a Red Queen Killing Seven Times. I’ll be damned.

Anyway, this turns out to be relevant for more than purely thematic reasons. It seems that “the same thing happened a hundred years later --seven murders-- and the same thing a hundred years after that. And always, always in this castle. And always involving two sisters.” It’s true that three incidents does establish a pattern, and grandpa eyes the two kids significantly before telling them to forget about it, it’s just an old wives tale that he’s sure isn’t true. Although I can’t help but notice that when the kids mention it could happen again he knows the exact year off the top of his head.

That year, of course, will be 1972. (Incidentally, I looked into 1672 to see if I could figure out the historical context for the inaugural sister-stabbing. If there was anything going on that would explain it, it didn’t make the wikipedia page for that year. Maybe they were just bored?). A credit sequence set to an A+ spooky-funky track by composer Bruno Nicolai (ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, EYEBALL) reinforces what we already suspected: this was not an isolated incident of homicidal violence between the two sisters. So when the fateful year rolls around, we’re ready to see some merciless sister-on-sister smackdown, and are surprised and suspicious when only one sister is in evidence. In fact, it seems that the blonde one has already prevailed over her brunette counterpart, bashing her head against a stone pillar and dumping her body in a nearby pond. That seems like it would have solved things pretty neatly, except that some mysterious black-gloved red-cloaked figure has recently murdered Grandpa, and one can’t help but reflect on the circumstances of his “old wives tale” now appearing unexpectedly germain.

Remaining sister Kitty (now played by Barbara Bouchet, BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING**) works at "Springe," some sort of nightmarish company that manufactures fashion, depicted here in the form of a motorized scooter resting on top of a small hillock of what looks to be a sheepskin taken from an animal roughly the size of a mature african elephant. Or maybe it’s a big pile of building insulation? Anyway, everyone seems to agree it’s extremely fashionable. And in case you didn’t pick up that it was now 1972 from the gratuitous shot of a newspaper dateline, you may direct your attention to literally every article of clothing or building interior in the entire movie. I’ve often heard critics identify the setting of a film as an unbilled principal character, and in this case not only is that true, but 1972 is a total ham that is simply incapable of not stealing every scene by doing some kind of ridiculous nonsense in the background. As evidence, I offer everything from an indoor statue that appears to be a blooming onion made of metal penises, to plaid suits that look like they were sewn together from the skins of errant midwestern hunters, to an all-checkerboard three-piece on a lady that frankly is a red nose away from a clown suit. Observe:

That’s a lot of 1972, right there. 

Anyway, there’s definitely some kind of Red Queen on the loose, killing multiple times without exceeding seven, and of course Kitty is understandably convinced that this is either the supernatural revenge of her sister, or a sinister impostor motivated by something fashion-related. She has no shortage of suspects, because pretty much everyone who works at “Springe” is a backstabbing cunt of the highest order. I’d like to highlight all the possible persons of interest, but that would be impossible because they’re all identical blondes (the casting director definitely had a type) and I have no idea how many of them there are, although I can confidently say that one of them is Sybil Danning, the Austrian actress and model who is so famous that both you and I immediately recognized her name, though looking at her filmography I cannot really explain why. She’s in BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, I guess.

There’s no shortage of red herrings and fake-outs and ridiculous convoluted nonsense before we get to our appreciably ludicrous solution. That leaves the plot a little all over the place, which is fine for a giallo, and it’s abley buoyed by Nicolai's kickin’ score and the handsome photography of Alberto Spagnoli (Bava’s SHOCK, in his first film as a director of photography). It’s much more freewheeling mystery than gruesome slasher, though, so you’d better be invested in the whodunnit angle. The kills are nothing special --mostly just off-camera stabbings-- though I am absolutely a big fan of the killer’s deeply unsettling mask (the most unnatural human face since Shatner’s DEVIL’S RAIN getup) and unhinged laugh.

One thing I’m not a big fan of? The out-of-the-blue brutal rape scene. It is never mentioned again by anyone, nor does it seem to have any subsequent impact on the victim, and the perpetrator dies minutes later and nobody even realizes it, so I’m gonna have to assume this was one of those “the producers said we needed a sexy rape” situations, but if that’s true I could really have done without seeing the victim weeping and shaking and covered in blood two minutes later. The sleazy rapist is at least portrayed as a degenerate scumbag who dies painfully and unlamented a few minutes later, but then again like half the cast here dies painfully and unlamented, so I don’t see how this whole incident was at all necessary or beneficial to the film in any way. Not an uncommon plot element at the time (though this one seems especially sadistic), but definitely one little aspect of some of these 70’s films that hasn’t aged as charmingly. To which I say, frankly: good.

Other than that one sour note, though, most of the movie is light, fluffy fun, with no shortage of cheerfully dumb dialogue and confounding plotting. “I can assure you there wasn’t any negligence on our side,” says the doctor who allowed a hallucinating psychiatric patient to escape and impale herself on a fence. That sounds a little suspicious, but the dead patient’s husband seems to happily accept this assessment, even when the Doctor goes on to say, apropos of nothing, “We’ve had patients from aristocratic families. We’ve tried to preserve their anonymity, like the Gotterschaums and the Wildenbrucks.” Fortunately, when hubby asks which Wildenbruck, the doctor informs him “you’re asking for too much information.” Good to know there’s a limit. I guess in his defense, all he claimed is that he tried.

Director Emilio Miraglia’s previous (and only other) giallo THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF HER GRAVE is more gothic and unsettling and probably the better movie overall, but who can argue with such a bounty of frothy, airheaded fun (give or take the odd brutal rape scene)? The whole thing is about as tightly plotted as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, but there’s nearly always something colorful and ridiculous going on, and it frequently looks and sounds great (especially in the handsome Arrow Video restoration from 2017), plus you’re never far from some gorgeous blonde taking off her clothes (and for the ladies: mustaches!). So it goes down pretty smooth for anyone with an affection for the genre (and who else would ever consider watching?). Besides, while there is no shortage of gialli which feature abrupt, insane twists, this one is a real doozy. In fact, just as it seems to be wrapping up with a resolution which would be --well, logical isn’t nearly the right word, but at least imaginable -- suddenly it takes another turn out of fucking nowhere right into the craziest god damn resolution I ever heard of, involving (SPOILER) a secret identity, a faked death, a swapped sibling, a castle dungeon, and a clue that requires a flashback to a pair of tits, and that still doesn’t get us to the true culprit behind everything. That's the kind of giallo my spirit craves. It's the kind of giallo this world needs.

I close, then, with a word of caution: if the imposing castle you live in has a history of siblings murdering each other and then returning from the grave for revenge every 100 years, maybe consider just moving.

* Schündler has a filmography interesting enough to merit its own footnote: he began his career in 1924, appeared in fucking THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (!), then stuck around Germany during the war years appearing in more films than I am comfortable with (though they look to be mostly non-political, and Goebbels banned at least two of them) only to re-emerge in the post-war years as a director, move on to a handful of German Krimi films in the 60s (THE COLLEGE GIRL MURDERS) and sex comedies (SEXY SUSAN KNOWS HOW…!, I LIKE GIRLS WHO DO, and the magnificently named SEX IS NOT FOR VIRGINS) before somehow bouncing back and winding up as “Karl” in the fucking EXORCIST and Prof. Milius in SUSPIRIA, and even turning up in Wim Wender’s THE AMERICAN FRIEND and the David Hemmings/David Bowie JUST A GIGOLO before becoming a staple on German TV until his death in 1988. He’s terrible here, but the dubbing isn’t doing anyone any favors.

** One more reason this movie should have an animal in its title.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	IMDB claims The Corpse That Didn't Want to Die! But I can’t actually find any evidence in the wild that this tagline ever appeared anywhere.
TITLE ACCURACY	Almost stunning accurate, considering the source
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	None
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Italy (though partially filmed in Germany)
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Giallo, slasher
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Barbara Bouchet had a pretty good run on gialli, with BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, AMUCK, THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS, THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES, and finally DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING all within two years.
NUDITY?	Plenty
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Unfortunately yes
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None, which is, I guess, why they figured they couldn’t go with an animal in the title. But come on guys, let’s be a little creative. Was there actually a cat in CAT O’ NINE TAILS?
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Certainly, there is the suggestion of a vengeful ghost
POSSESSION?	A lighter suggestion that, at the very least, these ladies are fated for this.
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	There’s this weird stalking creep who peeps at them in one scene.
MORAL OF THE STORY	(HUGE SPOILERS!!!) If you’re concerned enough about your daughters being fated to kill each other that you would adopt a decoy, maybe just move?