"The Raven"

Tonight I watched "The Raven" (1935), the final movie in my four film Boris & Bela Collection. It starts out in near identical fashion to last night's masterpiece "The Black Cat". This time a lone woman is driving too fast down a muddy road. The night is pitch black, the rain is pouring down. Suddenly the car's headlights flash upon a "detour" sign - the road ahead is washed out. Holy smokes!

The woman swerves to avoid a ditch, her car rolls over, fade to black.

In the next scene she is in a hospital on an operating table. She is comatose, and the surgeons have given up on her without even trying to operate. Her father is in the room too. He is a local Judge, an important man of influence, and I am assuming we are in America this time because everyone so far has spoken without an accent. But we could be in Transylvania or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, because of the Washed Out Muddy Road and the Pitch Black Night and the Pouring Rain and the Spooky Looking Trees. At any rate, the doctors tell the Judge that nothing can be done for his daughter, but he refuses to accept that verdict. "Please", he implores them. "I'll pay you anything! You must save her".

The docs insist it is beyond their power to do this, but because the Judge continues to beg them, they name a man who just might be able to help.

That man is of course Bela Lugosi, and by golly, who else would you want as your surgeon if your life was on the line, am I right?

Dr. Lugosi can work miracles. He also has an Edgar Allen Poe fixation, whereby his study has a taxidermist Raven sitting on his desk. He recites Poe poems chapter and verse to visitors, and....

Horrors! He also has a Poe-inspired Torture Chamber down in his basement, accessible only by a Secret Revolving Panel in the wall of his nicely appointed but not particularly stylish home.

The Judge is not aware of this, however, so he of course wants Bela to operate in order to save his daughter. Bela reluctantly agrees, and he does indeed save her life. When she awakens after the operation, she is as good as new.

But then!

Then Bela falls in love with her (the beautiful Irene Ware), and her father the Judge won't allow it, because she is already engaged to a nice young gentleman without a scary accent.

However!

A monkey wrench is then thrown into the works by the arrival at Dr. Lugosi's door of a criminal on the run. He is of course Boris Karloff. Boris wants Dr. Bela to "change his face" so that the police will not recognise him. Bela is a medical genius who can do that no problem. And he does it. He changes Boris Karloff's face.

But the results are not exactly what Boris was hoping for.

Things go downhill from there, to put it mildly, and naturally - as you would expect - the action is going to lead us down to the basement, where Dr. Lugosi has constructed his elaborate Torture Chamber, all of which is based on the devices of Mr. Poe (Pit & The Pendulum, the walled in room of "The Cask Of Amontillado", et al).

Boris Karloff is still pissed about his less-than-satisfactory Face Change, but he is gonna hang in there with Dr. Bela for the moment, because only Bela can fix his face...if he decides to do it.

Bela, for his part, is fixated on Irene Ware......and Ed Poe.

That's all I can tell you, except for the usual truisms about the black and white photography looking incredible, and the Ton Of Story being elucidated over the course of a mere 62 minutes.

As I have said recently, I encourage you to see all of the Boris & Bela collaborations, and besides that I also implore you to see all the movies each man starred in on his own.

Now that I've finished this latest four film collection, I'll be looking at both men's IMDBs for movies I haven't seen, though I know I'll be lucky to find others as good as these four. I've probably watched 25 to 30 movies over the years that had either Karloff or Lugosi in them, or both.

Anyhow......