General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Raven (1935 film)

The Raven is a 1935 American horror film from Universal Pictures, directed by Louis Friedlander (who soon after took the name Lew Landers) and starring Bela Lugosi as a surgeon obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and Boris Karloff as the criminal whose face he disfigures. It was suggested by Poe's poem "The Raven", first printed in the New York Evening Mirror on 29 January 1845, and was the third Poe adaptation in Universal's horror cycle, after Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Black Cat (1934).¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	8 July 1935, Universal Pictures Corp.; 60 or 62 minutes, 7 reels, black and white¹
Director / writer	Louis Friedlander (later Lew Landers), his feature directing debut after five serials; screenplay by David Boehm¹^•³
Leads	Bela Lugosi as Dr. Richard Vollin; Boris Karloff (billed as Karloff) as Edmond Bateman¹
Production	Shot in fifteen days on a total budget of $109,750⁴
Source	Suggested by Poe's poem "The Raven" (New York Evening Mirror, 29 Jan 1845)¹
Reception	Metascore 44 (mixed); IMDb 6.8/10 from about 7,400 votes; Rotten Tomatoes 79%⁵^•⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot and relationship to Poe

When the dancer Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) is severely injured in an automobile wreck, her father, Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds), and her fiancé, Dr. Jerry Halden (Lester Matthews), ask the retired but brilliant Dr. Richard Vollin (Lugosi) to operate. Vollin agrees, falls in love with Jean, and becomes obsessed with her; when the judge forbids him to see his daughter, the surgeon plots revenge with the help of Edmond Bateman (Karloff), a fugitive criminal who has made a regrettable pact with him.¹^•⁴

Despite the title, the film is not an attempt to film Poe's poem. Vollin's hobby is the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and for him the poem is a talisman symbolizing death, which he regards as the only certain part of life.¹ Contemporary reviews claimed the film drew not only on the title source but also on Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Buried Alive," "The Gold Bug" and other tales; the New York Times review remarked that it took "amazing effrontery" for Universal to claim the film was inspired by Poe's classic short stories, as the plot resembled none of them.³ In each successive Universal Poe adaptation, the biographical legend of the author became more central to plot and character while the narratives of the original works receded; in The Raven, Vollin believes himself a spiritual descendant of Poe because of his extraordinary intelligence, obsession with torture, and history of romantic disappointment.²

Production

The success of The Black Cat (1934), the first pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, prompted Universal studio head Carl Laemmle, Jr. to cast the two stars together again.⁴ Production ran from 20 March to 5 April 1935, and the film was shot on a fifteen-day schedule with a total budget of $109,750.¹^•⁴ The crew included cinematographer Charles Stumar, art director Albert S. D'Agostino, and editor Albert Akst.³ Composer Vaughan wrote and orchestrated approximately fifteen minutes of music, recorded in May 1935 with Bakaleinikoff conducting, supplemented by about twenty minutes of stock tracks from Destination Unknown and The Black Cat.⁸

Louis Friedlander, who shortly after the film's release changed his name to Lew Landers, made his feature directing debut with The Raven after having made five serials.³

Lugosi and Karloff

In The Black Cat, Karloff had played the villain with Lugosi as a persecuted rival; in The Raven the roles reversed, with Lugosi in the major part as the demonic surgeon and Karloff in the smaller role as a victim of his surgical handiwork. Even though Lugosi was billed below Karloff, this was the sole horror picture in which he outranked his fellow star; in their subsequent joint vehicles, including Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Body Snatcher (1945), it was Karloff who always took the leading part.⁴ Karloff was not fond of the film, remarking: "Here was an attempt to pile on the thrills without much logic." Despite a rumored rivalry, the two actors became good friends on the set.⁴

Censorship and reception

On release the film came under heavy fire from state censorship boards for its emphasis on torture and sadism. New York and Ohio wanted to omit scenes of Judge Thatcher being menaced by the swinging pendulum and some of Vollin's dialogue, such as "Torture waiting, waiting. It will be sweet...."⁴

The torture chamber, Bateman's distorted face, and rooms in Vollin's mansion that function as elevators and death traps, including walls that can crush people, give the film its horrific edge; a mirror-shattering sequence anticipated a similar scene in Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai (1948).⁴ Critics were mixed: Variety called it "a good horror flicker" and credited Lugosi with contributing the shocker aspects forcibly, while Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times suggested Universal should "stick to the pulpies for plot material."⁵ The film has since become a cult favorite among genre fans for its macabre touches and the flamboyant performances of its leads.⁴

Later history

Roger Corman directed a different film with the same title in 1963, a horror parody starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Jack Nicholson.⁴ The 1935 film runs 61 minutes in current digital releases and can be bought or rented on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026