mhesselius
Joined Jul 2010
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mhesselius's rating
In the 1920s films dealing with supernatural evil were extremely rare. However, director Rex Ingram, obviously influenced by earlier German forays into the supernatural, cast German actor Paul Wegener of DER GOLEM in this adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel THE MAGICIAN. Wegener's menacing performance as an evil Yogi in LEBENDE BUDDHAS (1925) made him a good choice to play Oliver Haddo, obsessed with creating life from an ancient formula requiring the heart's blood of a maiden, played by Ingram's wife Alice Terry.
John F. Seitz' cinematography is superb, especially in the depiction of the heroine's hallucinatory descent into Hell where she is figuratively ravished by a lustful and athletic satyr. And although Haddo doesn't succeed in creating the grisly, half-complete humans as in the novel, the controversial subject matter was nevertheless strong enough to insure the film's failure at the box-office in 1926.
Interesting comparisons have been made between this film and James Wale's FRANKENSTEIN, but the subject of black magic also invites comparison with later films - THE BLACK CAT (1934), THE NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), and THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968) - featuring characters who like Oliver Haddo were modeled on real-life occultist Aleister Crowley.
John F. Seitz' cinematography is superb, especially in the depiction of the heroine's hallucinatory descent into Hell where she is figuratively ravished by a lustful and athletic satyr. And although Haddo doesn't succeed in creating the grisly, half-complete humans as in the novel, the controversial subject matter was nevertheless strong enough to insure the film's failure at the box-office in 1926.
Interesting comparisons have been made between this film and James Wale's FRANKENSTEIN, but the subject of black magic also invites comparison with later films - THE BLACK CAT (1934), THE NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), and THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968) - featuring characters who like Oliver Haddo were modeled on real-life occultist Aleister Crowley.
In THE RAVEN Lugosi hams shamelessly, and the plot, involving an obsessed Poe fanatic using torture methods from Poe stories on unsuspecting guests in his weird mansion, is a poor attempt to cash in on the success of the earlier Karloff/Lugosi vehicle THE BLACK CAT, only this time with Lugosi taking Karloff's place as the arch fiend.
I am convinced Karloff's make-up is meant to recall his role as Morgan the butler in THE OLD DARK HOUSE, but it's extremely artificial-looking. THE RAVEN, together with THE INVISIBLE RAY - a Sci Fi film with a few pointless Gothic touches - are parodies of the Universal style, and show that in 1935 Universal had begun to run out of ideas and was starting to cannibalize its original releases.
I am convinced Karloff's make-up is meant to recall his role as Morgan the butler in THE OLD DARK HOUSE, but it's extremely artificial-looking. THE RAVEN, together with THE INVISIBLE RAY - a Sci Fi film with a few pointless Gothic touches - are parodies of the Universal style, and show that in 1935 Universal had begun to run out of ideas and was starting to cannibalize its original releases.