The Raven

It seems like there's a fair number of people who are unaware that there's a difference between an adaptation and an interpretation when it comes to movies. The former takes a known work -- book, play, video game -- and turns it into a movie. Misery, The Lord of the Rings, and Glengarry Glen Ross are all adaptations. An interpretation, though, takes the source material and puts a new spin on it, or goes in an entirely different direction. The original Super Mario Bros. movie and World War Z are interpretations, sharing barely anything but titles and names with their source material. Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven is iconic, but it doesn't lend itself well to the idea of a movie. It's a guy sitting in a room, wallowing in grief as a bird annoys him. What do you do with that? Well, obviously turn it into a comedy-horror where the split is 70-30 in favor of comedy, make it about a trio of rival sorcerers, and cast horror legends like Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre, of course. Other than Lenore being a character, and there being a raven for like 15 minutes at the start, that's all you get. Judged then on what it is and not for how much (or how little) it has to do with the poem ... it's exactly what you expect from these Vincent Price mid-60's horror-comedy movies. It's cheesy, the sets are cheap, there's a zany soundtrack, and actors leaving no scenery unchewed. But it's also not aiming for anything more. This is silly and campy by design. It has iconic actors having the time of their lives cutting loose in a harmless picture, and a baby version of Jack Nicholson trying his hardest to keep up. Anybody who puts this on expecting anything beyond the normal fare that would come from this combination of ingredients is expecting impossible alchemy. It's dumb, but it's dumb fun. It isn't going to be a top 10 comedy of all time, but it also isn't trying to be. It's just fun for the sake of it.