#Olive Sturgess

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Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Olive Sturgess

The Raven (1963) dir. Roger Corman

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The Raven

directed by Roger Corman, 1963

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Roger Corman’s gothic horror comedy film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ opened in theaters this week 60 years ago. 🏰🔮🪦

“𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚏𝚊𝚜𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚞𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚘𝚏 𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚞𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚜.”

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Currently Watching

THE RAVEN Roger Corman USA, 1963

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From the Golden Age of Television

15 October 1864 - NBC - September 15, 1957

A presentation of "Goodyear Playhouse" Season 6 Episode 19

Drama

Running Time: 60 minutes

Television Play by Louis Pelletier

Produced by Philip Barry Jr

Directed by Herbert Hirschman

Stars:

Paul Tripp as Mr. Harrison

Ralph Dunn as Booker

John McGovern as The Cashier

Olive Sturgess as Hannah

James Pritchett as Cullen

Clu Gulager as Wesley

Donald May as Oliver

Alan Mixon as Lt. Bennett H. Young 

Robert Dowdell as Davis

John Napier as Saunders

Charles Robinson as Dober

Don McHenry as The Minister

Truman Smith as The Hotel Clerk

Glenn Cannon as Dawson

Gene Gross as McDowell

A recounting of the Confederate raid on St. Alban's, Vermont

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God I love the English

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Clint Eastwood with Olive Sturgess and Dani Crayne

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Oliver Sturgess in The Raven (1963), directed by Roger Corman

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Vincent Price as Dr. Erasmus Craven

The Raven (1963) dir. Roger Corman

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The Price May Be Right - Number 19

Welcome to “The Price May Be Right!” I’m counting down My Top 31 Favorite Vincent Price Performances & Appearances! The countdown will cover movies, TV productions, and many more forms of media. Today’s choice might be a bit confusing. I give you two performances for the price of one, with Number 19: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

The names of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe are practically synonymous, at least in cinematic circles. While Price made many, MANY movies in his long and storied career, arguably the ones for which he became best well-known were the special movies produced by AIP for what is now referred to colloquially as “The Corman-Poe Cycle.” This was a series of eight films, all directed by Roger Corman for the company, which were based – some more loosely than others – on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent was the nominal star for seven of the pictures within the octology. The only one which DIDN’T feature Price was the third film of the bunch, “The Premature Burial.”

Most of the movies in the series were treated as more or less straightforward horror films of the time. However, the one exception was the movie inspired by the great author’s most famous “Poe-m” (I am so sorry), “The Raven.” The original poem is easily one of Poe’s greatest pieces of work, telling in short verse the story of a lonely man, mourning the loss of his beloved wife, Lenore. He receives a visit from a mysterious raven, which turns out to be a supernatural harbinger of doom and despair. It’s a tragic, ambiguous, deeply perturbing poem, and still a classic to this day. Corman’s 1963 movie interpretation, however, eschews much of the pathos, as the film is actually a horror-comedy, with emphasis on the latter half of that equation. In essence, the picture is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of all the others in the eight-part series, which is sort of a clever idea. In the film, Price plays the main protagonist: Dr. Craven, a physician and ex-sorceror who, like the narrator in the poem, has seemingly lost his precious Lenore. Also like in the poem, he is visited by a talking raven…but this is about where all similarities cease, for the raven turns out to be a fellow dark wizard, by the name of Dr. Bedlo. He reveals to Craven that Lenore is apparently still alive, and in the grasp of their shared nemesis, the evil Dr. Scarabus. The two magicians thus set out on a quest to confront Scarabus, so Bedlo can get revenge on him for past humiliations, while Craven ascertains if his wife is, indeed, still breathing…and if so, what she is doing with the evil wizard. Much like “House of the Long Shadows” would do many years later, the film acts as something of a “Who’s Who?” of classic Gothic horror pictures. Not only does Price play the lead role, but the perpetually-drunk Bedlo is played by Peter Lorre, while the redoubtable Boris Karloff tackles the part of the slimy Scarabus. Future Joker and star of “The Shining,” Jack Nicholson, also appears in an early role, playing the part of the romantic interest for Craven’s daughter, who is played by the much-less-famous (but no less talented) Olive Sturgess. It’s more fun than frightening on the whole. Price’s Craven is an interesting protagonist for the story: despite being very gifted in magical arts, and coming from a long line of distinguished warlocks, he’s a very mild-mannered individual, most of the time. The film gives him a story arc of essentially growing more of a spine, as he learns to fight more fiercely against the injustices around him, and accepts his destined place in the world: an atypical hero’s journey.

All this is well and good, and the movie is definitely worth checking out, if only for the novelty of the adventure and its stellar cast. However, this was not the only time Price would tackle Poe’s Raven onscreen. Many years later, Price would get a chance to theatrically perform a reading of the original poem for a Halloween Special during the 1980s. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the name of the special was, nor the exact year it came out: I actually tried to look it up, since I DID learn that information…but I can no longer find the source, and I sadly never wrote it down, dummy that I am. Whoops. Whatever else is in the special in question, however, it’s hard to believe much could top Price performing Poe’s greatest poem the way it was always meant to be performed.

In my opinion, Price’s reading of The Raven is the definitive interpretation of the poem. He brings the right amount of melodrama and emotion to the work, giving the Narrator a sense of both decadence and dismalness befitting the story as it happens. From his tragic nostalgia to his wonder at the appearance of the talking bird and even to his moments of desperation and spooky loss, he runs the whole gamut of the poem’s emotional breadth with marvelous aplomb. Others, such as Christopher Lee and James Earl Jones, have done masterful interpretations and readings of the poem in their own rights…but for me, Price is the eternal voice of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and no single take on the poem has ever matched his reading for me. Bottom line: whether it’s the movie or the poem, when I think of “The Raven,” I think of Vincent Price. End of story. Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 18!

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: The Other Boleyn Girl

Rating: PG-13

Director: Justin Chadwick

Cast: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, David Morrissey, Benedict Cumberbatch, Oliver Coleman, Ana Torrent, Eddie Redmayne, Juno Temple, Andrew Garfield, Mark Lewis Jones, Iain Mitchell

Release year: 2008

Genres: drama, history, romance

Blurb: Anne and Mary Boleyn are driven by their family's blind ambition to compete for the love of the handsome and passionate King Henry VIII.

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The Raven

Roger Corman and Richard Matheson had enjoyed “The Black Cat,” the comic story in TALES OF TERROR (1962), so much they set out to do an entire feature in that tone. The result, THE RAVEN (1963, Criterion Channel), may never reach the inspired lunatic heights of a Leo McCarey or a Preston Sturges. It’s more on the level of Corman’s “schlemiel trilogy” (LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, A BUCKET OF BLOOD and THE CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA). And it’s an awful lot of fun. Medieval sorcerer Vincent Price is visited by a raven who’s actually a fellow magician (Peter Lorre) transformed by Price’s father’s oldest enemy (Boris Karloff). When Lorre lets drop that he saw Price’s deceased wife (Hazel Court) in Karloff’s castle, they set off to solve the mystery, accompanied by Price’s ditzy daughter (Olive Sturgess) and Lorre’s dim-witted son (Jack Nicholson, acting like Richard Crenna in OUR MISS BROOKS). The sets are re-cycled, thanks to Daniel Haller, as is a fire sequence that turns up in almost all of Corman’s Poe films. It’s all about as historically accurate as the script is faithful to Poe’s poem. Price lives in the Usher House, even if it’s more 19th than 15th century and a lot of the furnishing are Victorian. This is easily Price’s most over-the-top performance in the Poe films, and at times his mugging gets a little too obvious. Lorre is dryer and ad-libbed some of the film’s best lines. But the real comic honors go to Karloff, who reportedly had the toughest time making the film between the rigors of production and trying to adjust whenever Lorre changed the script. His line readings are so sincere and expertly timed, I was laughing almost every time he opened his mouth. The women also deserve credit. Sturgess is smart enough to play her role straight, which makes her character’s ditziness much funnier than if she’d played for laughs. And Court, who always said she preferred comedy, is delicious as the scheming Lenore. She’s both sexy (critics mostly reviewed her cleavage) and witty, with a sense of relish whenever she exercises the power her beauty gives her.