This discussion of the late, great Boris Karloff reminded me of seeing Mr. Karloff as a very young kid in the 1963 horror/comedy film, “The Raven,” along with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, horror queen Hazel Court and a very young Jack Nicholson (the pride of Neptune, NJ).
I remember my father drove my younger brother and I, along with a bunch of our friends, to see the movie at a local theater on a January 1964 Saturday morning. The theater was packed with kids, mostly loud and eager boys.
The film, a parody of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” starts with a good 16th century sorcerer, Dr. Erasmus Craven (the great Vincent Price) lamenting the apparent death of his beautiful wife, Lenore (Hazel Court). A small raven flies into Dr. Craven’s room and the doctor, believing that ravens can sometimes predict the future, begs the raven to tell him if he will ever see his beloved wife again. “How the hell should I know!?”replies the testy raven (voiced by former Mr. Moto veteran actor, Peter Lorre). When Peter Lorre exclaimed the word, hell, all of the kids in the theater screamed out in shock and amusement! I mean, that was an offensive word way back in 1964. (my mother told me that everyone shouted out in surprise, when Clark Gable told Vivien Leigh in the conclusion of “Gone With The Wind,” in 1939, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The raven is actually another wizard, named Dr. Aldolphus Bedlo, who had been transformed into a raven by the evil sorcerer, Dr. Scarabus, portrayed by Boris Karloff. (Sort of like how Angelique changed Joshua Collins into a cat; I wonder if Dan Curtis later “borrowed” that idea from “The Raven”?)
Anyway, in order to try and transform Dr. Bedlo back into his human form, Dr. Craven goes down into the family basement crypt (sort of like the Collins Family Mausoleum) to cut a needed lock of his long-deceased father’s hair to use in the attempt to transform the raven back into Dr. Bedlo.
When Dr. Craven opens the coffin to cut his dead father’s hair, his father opens his eyes, reaches up to grab his son’s arm and says, “Beware!” before closing his eyes for good. Let me tell you, the kids in the theater all screamed out when that dead father reached up and grabbed Vincent Price’s arm! Twelve years later, when Sissy Spacek’s bloody arm reached out of her grave to grab Amy Irving’s arm in Stephen King’s film adaptation, “Carrie,” with everyone screaming in that movie theater, I immediately remembered that shocking scene in “The Raven.”
Eventually, after Dr. Craven discovers that his wife, Lenore, is still alive and has been two-timing him with the evil Dr. Scarbarys, the two sorcerers engage in a battle of spells, incantations and psychic projections which was very cool then, but later seemed quite formulaic when Barnabas and Angelique engaged in a similar supernatural battle in Tim Burton’s mezza-mezza 2012 DS film. Thankfully, Dr. Craven prevails and Dr. Scarbarus and the philandering Mrs. Lenore Craven are crushed to death when Scarbarus’ castle collapsed down on them. Fine!
You know, I wonder if “The Raven,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” starring Vincent Price and a very young and beautiful Barbara Steele, along with all of the other wonderfully campy Roger Corman “Quicky” horror films of the early to mid-1960s, helped to set the stage for the eventual coming of the beloved “Dark Shadows” in
1966?
Anyway, I hope that Annie up in upstate New York, Uncle Roger in Connecticut, MB and the long-too-absent Gothick up in Massachusetts, are all well-stocked and prepared for tonight’s/Saturday’s blizzard, set to hit the North-East states in a few hours. Personally, I’m well-stocked and prepared to watch my old Sci-Fi Channel vhs tapes of DS until the storm subsides.
Bob, who’s getting way-too-old, like the venerable Ezra Braithwaite, to shovel any more God-d@mned snow at
this point in life.
![[snowball-fight]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/xmas-snowball-fight-smiley-emoticon.gif "Snowball Fight")
