“Maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things.”
Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) has been in a car accident. She needs a delicate operation that only Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi) can perform. Her father Judge Thatcher (Samuel S Hinds) goes to him and pleads for him to save his daughter. Vollin finally agrees to do the operation. It is successful. Then Vollin falls in love with Jean.
Jean is engaged to Dr. Jerry Holden (Lester Mathews). Judge Thatcher sees something going on between his daughter and Vollin. He goes to Vollin. While talking to him he realizes that Vollin is in love with Jean. He warns Vollin to leave her alone. Vollin insists on having Jean. Judge Thatcher tells Vollin he is “stark raving mad”. Thatcher leaves.
Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff) is a murderer on the run. He asks Vollin to change his face so no one will recognize him. Vollin sees an opportunity to get revenge on Judge Thatcher. He tells Bateman he will change his face if Bateman does something for him. He wants Bateman to kill for him. Bateman refuses. Bateman says he hopes that a new face will change his life and give him a chance to be normal. Vollin performs the surgery, but instead of fixing Bateman’s face he turns him into a disfigured monster. Vollin promises he will reverse what he did only if Bateman obeys him. Bateman has no choice but to agree.
Vollin is an Edgar Alan Poe fanatic. Especially about Poe’s torture devises. He has turned his house into one big torture chamber. Vollin, now totally insane, hosts a dinner party and invites several guests. Among them are Jean, Jerry, and Judge Thatcher. One by one, Vollin subjects the three people he most hates to his Poe inspired torture devises.
“The Raven” was released in 1935 and was directed by Lew Landers. Here is another movie called “The Raven” that has very little to do with the poem. It does have a lot to do with Poe’s other works in that the torture devises are from his other stories. It’s a short movie, only 61 minutes.
The film did not do well at the box office. I can understand that. There really isn’t much to it. It sounds like it would be a great horror movie with torture devises and a hideous monster, not to mention Lugosi and Karloff, but it’s so short that there really isn’t time for much of anything. I think that since the “Hays Code” was put in solid place the previous year that there was very little of anything they could show. How good is a torture movie when you can’t really torture anyone? Granted the guys do their best with what they’ve got, they are professionals and they give their all, but they are not allowed to follow through.
This is the third movie that Karloff and Lugosi did together. Even though Karloff is billed first, it is Lugosi’s movie. He is exceptionally wacko.