The Black Raven

I'm a fan of George Zucco, but I found this movie exceedingly tedious. For one thing, I couldn't see what was going on half of the time; a significant part of the action takes place either in darkened rooms or outside in the pitch black rainy night. This also contributes to a problem I had of keeping a couple of characters straight, especially the criminal types who spend most of their time hiding or stomping around huddled in rain gear. There was also very little character development-we just get one-shot glances at some of the individuals, and this lack of depth gave me little with which to distinguish some of them in my mind. One guy's a criminal who has broken out of jail in order to get revenge on Zucco's character "the Raven," (whose shadiness of character is never quite clear, particularly in terms of the past and the present). Another guy is apparently on the run after having been sold out by his own crooked boss. Then you have the stereotypical little guy who is sick of being treated like the cowardly runt he is and has embezzled fifty thousand dollars. The only half way normal people we meet are a man and woman whose plan of eloping to Canada has been delayed by the storm outside. Her father, some kind of criminally inclined businessman himself, tracks his daughter to the Raven's hotel, thus setting the stage for the night's drama. He is murdered, the embezzled money disappears, and the incompetent sheriff doesn't have the time or desire to actually investigate a crime, especially since it's so much easier to just pick somebody out and pin everything on him. The plethora of killings that follow each of his arrests greatly annoys him. The second half of the film basically consists of different people, often unidentifiable to me because of the darkness on screen, running around the house hiding from, ridiculing, and basically annoying each other. Perhaps if I had been able to actually see what was going on, I would have enjoyed this movie. Even George Zucco didn't seem to have his heart in this film. His cinematic get-togethers of either invited or unplanned guests are usually interesting, but this is an exception.

George Zucco plays Bradford the owner of a country inn and Glen Strange playing as a bumbling oaf. On a stormy night "The Black Raven" is visited by a convict with a grudge against Bradford, a bank teller who has stolen $50k, and a couple that are eloping.

The atmosphere is excellent i.e., an old dark house on a stormy night!

Glen Strange is the one that played Frankenstein the last three "Frankenstein" movies House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, and of course he played Sam on Gunsmoke.

The 1943 PRC effort "The Black Raven" is an interesting mix of "old dark house" stories and a slight dash of film noir.

George Zucco is great as Amos Bradford, the owner of The Black Raven Inn, a stopover on the edge of the Canadian border. Bradford is also known to the underworld as a contact man who can help crooks escape across the border to safety. Add a thunderstorm, several crooks, a pair of young lovers, a timid banker, and a bumbling handyman to the mix, and the stage is set for murder, mystery, and mayhem.

Serial fans will want to keep and eye out for the Sheriff, played by Charles Middleton. Middleton is probably best known to fans as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials.