The Raven (1935 film)

The Raven is a 1935 American horror film directed by Louis Friedlander (who started to be credited as Lew Landers the following year) and starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Billed as having been "suggested by" Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem of the same title, excerpts of which are quoted at a few points in the film, it was adapted from an original screenplay by David Boehm. Lugosi stars as a neurosurgeon obsessed with Poe who has a torture chamber in his basement, and Karloff plays an escaped murderer on the run from the police whom Lugosi manipulates into doing his dirty work.

Three decades later, Karloff appeared in another film with the same title, Roger Corman's comedy gothic horror The Raven (1963), with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.

Plot

After Jean Thatcher, a young dancer, is injured in a car accident, her father, Judge Thatcher, and fiancé, Dr. Jerry Halden, implore neurosurgeon Dr. Richard Vollin, who now only conducts research, to come out of retirement and perform a delicate operation on her cranial nerve roots. Vollin is insensitive to human suffering and initially refuses to help, but when Judge Thatcher tells him that, in the opinion of his former hospital colleagues, only he can perform the operation successfully, Vollin's vanity persuades him to assist.

A month after the operation, Jean has recovered, and Vollin has become obsessed with her. She is grateful to Vollin for healing her, as well as for making Jerry his assistant, but when Vollin tells her during a checkup in his living room that he hired Jerry "to give him something to take the place of what he is losing", she avoids his embrace and gives an excuse for why she must go.