October Horror Challenge 2023 #40: "The Raven (1963)"

I swear i remember reading about this movie before, and possibly even watching it, but it took me FOREVER to find it in a Google search. It kept returning results for the movie of the same name from the 1930s with Bela Lugosi in it, and i was like "no, i LITERALLY just watched it and it's from the 60s and it has Vincent Price in it!" This is one of the infamous EdgarAllen Poe VincentPricemovies from the 60s that were VERY loosely based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. This one is "based on" the poem "The Raven." They took extremepoetic license with the plot, though. Amazon told me i would like this movie after all the classics i watched today, so i decided to give it a shot.

This movieisabouta sorcerer in the 1500s who is still mourning the death of his wife 2 years ago. His wife was named Lenore like the wife in Edgar Allen Poe's poem. His daughted Estelle wishes he would move on with his life. One night he gets a visit from a very mouthy crow who turnes out to be a cursed sorcerer who was turned into a crow as punishment. Together they come up with a potion that will turn him back into his human form. He informs the sorcerer that he saw the sorcerer'swife earlier in the evening, and she was alive! They set out with Estelle in tow, to see if what he said is true. is Lenore alive? Was she a ghost? Our heroesare determinedto find out (i used the term "heroes" very loosely here) since none of them are really good people except for maybe Estelle. Will the trio find Lenore, or is something more sinister going on?

Somehow i don't think this is what Edgar Allen Poe had in mindwhen he wrote "The Raven." It's a morbid little poem about losing a loved one and pining after the person you lost. A lot of Poe's work is about that topic. He faced a lot of losses in his life, so that'swhat he wrote about. This movie starts out being about a man who lost his wife and is haunted by a crow, so that tracks, but then it sprawls out into a tale of two sorcerers (and then a tale of three sorcerers) and the movie turns into a grudge match between Boris Karloff and Vincent Price. Not that I'm complaining, because they'reboth good actors and it'sfun to watch them face off like this, but I would have preferred a more somber, scary movie about maybe a ghost or something.