DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Lewis Freidlander (Lew Landers) & Edgar G. Ulmer
Starring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff
Release date 29 October 2007

Two black-and-white horror classics from the 1930s heyday of Universal, both (very loosely) based upon works by Edgar Allen Poe…

In The Raven Bela Lugosi plays a surgeon with a Poe fixation, lured out of retirement to help save the life of a dancer. He becomes obsessed with her, much to the disgust of her father. Lugosi, never a low-key actor, turns his performance up to 11 as his surgeon is driven mad by desire and a need for revenge.

Handily, he has a gothic dungeon underneath his otherwise nicely suburban house, stocked out with torture equipment modelled after that featured in Poe’s horror tales. Luring his targets to his home for a dinner party, Lugosi soon has one strapped under a descending pendulum blade and another couple locked in a room in which the walls are closing in. You don’t get this kind of melodrama in EastEnders. If this film were made today, with its gimmicky torture devices, it’d probably be an entry in the annual Saw series.

Along for the ride is Lugosi’s friend/rival Boris Karloff, playing an on-the-run criminal, disfigured by Lugosi and used to achieve his wicked ends. While The Raven allows Lugosi to overact something rotten, Karloff is somewhat subdued, falling back on elements of his performance as the Monster in Frankenstein to bring his character (half his face is caked in not very convincing make-up) to life.

The Raven is a fast-paced B-movie (coming in at just about one hour), which is no-one’s idea of art, but neither is it a classic of the genre. The short running time makes the complete lack of extras all the more annoying.

On the other hand, The Black Cat (released separately, although these films are available on region 1 as part of a Karloff/Lugosi box set at half the price) is a genuine classic. Here, the roles are reversed with Karloff taking the lead and Lugosi providing support. This was the first of a series of eight movies that united the pair on screen. Karloff plays an Aleister Crowley style Satanist, while Lugosi is a Hungarian psychiatrist. They have a past, united through war and the love of the same woman, which unfolds slowly as this creepy story progresses.

Director Edgar G. Ulmer really grasped the possibilities of this type of low-budget filmmaking, using limited resources in a striking and impressive way. The massive sets, the expressive performances, the elliptical script, the hypnotising score, the baroque direction: it all adds up to an unforgettable, dreamlike experience.

Again, this is a relatively short film that comes with no extras. From a value-for-money point of view, it would have been much better if these two had been paired up as one double bill release: there’s more than enough space on a single disc. Brian J. Robb

VERDICT
The Raven: 6/10
The Black Cat: 7/10
Points deducted for the lack of extras and the cost of these individually released films: otherwise these are two ancient horrors worth reviving.