One of the most sublimely silly products to emanate from Roger Corman's studio, The Raven has the very loosest of connections with the Edgar Allen Poe poem that gives it its title and which Vincent Price intones sepulchrally at the beginning. A retiring magician, Craven (Price) has opted out of the power struggles of peers such as Dr Scarabus (Boris Karloff) to brood on his dead wife and bring up his daughter. The arrival of Bledlo (Peter Lorre), an incompetent drunk whom Scarabus has turned into the raven of the title, involves him in everything he had renounced--life... is complicated further by the arrival of Bledlo's son Rexford, played by a staggeringly young Jack Nicholson. The special effects are almost perfunctory, yet the culminating magical duel between Price and Karloff is inventive and charming; this is one of those films that looks as if the actors enjoyed making it; while the script by Richard Matheson has a blithe awareness of its own shortcomings that makes it hard to dislike. On the DVD: The Raven comes to DVD with very boxy remastered mono sound, but is presented in its original widescreen 2.35:1 ratio, formatted for 16:9 TVs. The only extra is the original theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney [show more]
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A Roger Corman classic horror-spoof, which saw the first teaming of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff on screen. Having recently left the Brotherhood of Sorcerors after the death of his wife, magician Erasmus Craven (Price) is visited by a talking raven that claims to be another magician, Bedlo (Lorre). The bird also claims to having been turned into a raven by Craven's arch-enemy Dr Scarabus (Karloff). Bedlo persuades Craven to reverse the spell and, after Craven hears that a woman who looks like his wife has been seen in Scarabus' company, he accompanies Craven to Scarabus' castle where a magical showdown ensues.
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