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After The Black Cat, Lugosi and Karloff teamed up again the following year for The Raven, another film ‘suggested by Edgar Allen Poe’s immortal classic’. In it, Lugosi plays the increasingly unhinged surgeon Dr Vollin, who takes his love of Poe to the extreme of recreating a number of the torture devices mentioned in his stories. Soon, inspired by a criminal’s unfortunate comment that ‘maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things’ he gains himself a newly mutilated assistant, Bateman (Karloff), whom he disfigures to match the deeds he has in mind, namely kidnapping a girl (Irene Ware) with whom he is obsessed, along with her father and fiance, in order to test that all is in good working order down in his dungeon.

While Lugosi’s Vollin ¬– ‘Yesss - I like to torchurr!’ – goes gleefully demented, Karloff’s Bateman, eye now dropping off the side of his face, weighs his own promised facial reconstruction against his wish to save the girl who has shown him some kindness, and shows that even layers of make-up cannot obscure the quality of his acting.

 

Julian Upton on 8th October 2007
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