{"id":5036,"date":"2016-09-05T14:57:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T19:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2016-09-05T15:56:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T20:56:22","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/09\/05\/belated-movie-reviews-82\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our latest Vincent Price vehicle leads me to wonder: which lead actor has starred in the highest percentage of movies which culminate in the destruction, often flaming, of a castle? In The Raven<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1963), using Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name<\/a> as a jumping off point, Vincent Price is the wizard Erasmus Craven<\/em>, the husband of the woman who is the subject of the poem and now two years gone. He’s a quiet, underconfident wizard, living with his daughter, his dead wife (preserved in her coffin), and opens the story with the appearance of a talking raven.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the raven is returned to human form, a wizard by the name of Bedlo<\/em> (Peter Lorre), who is in a fury about the transformation, saying he lost a battle with the wizard\u00a0Scarabus<\/em> (Boris Karloff), and he had seen Craven’s late, lamented wife, Lenore, at\u00a0Scarabus’ domicile. Bestirred at the thought of Lenore, Craven decides to investigate by visiting\u00a0Scarabus’ castle.<\/p>\n

The plot continues, at first seeming a bit pedestrian but eventually including unforeseen, yet plausible, convolutions worth the time. The climactic battle is, for all that the film is a bit fluffy, fairly satisfying: leisurely, both serious and comedic; the points it makes are better than many to be found in today’s tense battle scenes.<\/p>\n

As the issue is decided,\u00a0\u00a0the castle, built of course of stone, still manages to catch alight and collapse in a fiery burst, much as do similar structures in other Price movies, such as\u00a0The Haunted Palace<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1963),\u00a0The Tomb of Ligeia<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1964), Morella<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1962),\u00a0House of the Seven Gables<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1963), and The Fall of the House of Usher<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1960) – and perhaps others that I have not yet seen.<\/p>\n

The raven is quite remarkable for its training. The three leads are excellent in their performances, and the supporting actors, including a young Jack Nicholson, are adequate in their work. This is a pleasantly entertaining film\u00a0for those viewers who are not ruffled by the extension of Poe’s famous poem into a lengthy feature film. For those who are appalled at the thought, I can only direct you to this bravura performance:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our latest Vincent Price vehicle leads me to wonder: which lead actor has starred in the highest percentage of movies which culminate in the destruction, often flaming, of a castle? In The Raven (1963), using Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name as a jumping off point, Vincent Price \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5042,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions\/5042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}