BY HANK REINEKE
As a promotional vehicle, the trailer for director Roger
Corman’s The Raven was clearly deceptive
in its construction. Cinemagoers were
promised that AIP’s newest Poe film would offer three of the “Screen’s Titans
of Terror,†the trailer flashing short, moody scenes of torch-lit chambers,
menacing stares, and the odd clutching hand. Intertitle cards and a voice-over narration
promised “A tempest of thrilling horror,†The
Raven to allow brave moviegoers to go “Careening through the darkest of
dangers into the ominous mystery of a master magician’s evil castle… witnessing
the mysterious powers of black magic.â€
On the eve of the film’s release, the newspaper promotionals
– entirely gleaned from the studio’s own duplicitous pressbook - promised much
of the same, “a thrilling mixture of the most powerful terror ingredients ever
assembled.†There was a reason for the
filmmakers to cautiously hold the actual cards they were playing close to their
chests. Producers James H. Nicholson and
Samuel Z. Arkoff were aware that through their series of Edgar Allan Poe
pictures they were holding a true tiger by the tail. It was certainly helpful to the notoriously
frugal producers that Poe’s work had long fallen into public domain status and was
therefore royalty-free in use. The box
office returns on the first of their four Poe films were pleasing, and
expectations were high that The Raven
would do as well if not better.
So it was only mildly surprising when, in March 1963, the
producers announced that no fewer than ten more Poe pictures would be slated
for production by AIP. The next one
planned, The Masque of the Red Death,
was announced to begin shooting in April of ’63… although a springtime shooting
wouldn’t actually commence as proclaimed. Other titles announced were to include, The Haunted Palace, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold Bug, A Descent
into the Maelstrom, Ligeia, The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade, The
Angel of the Odd, The Four Beast in One, and The City by the Sea. It was an ambitious plan, but with the
exception of Masque (with a delayed
November ’63 start) only four of the other projected titles would actually see
production.
Such breakneck speed mining of Poe’s Gothic horror materials
might be considered market over-saturation by contemporary standards, but upon
its release in January of 1963, The Raven
was the fifth Poe film released by AIP in a span of two years. In September of
1962, Samuel Z. Arkoff sat down for an interesting chinwag with Stanley
Eichelbaum, the theater and film critic of the San Francisco Examiner. That
interview touched briefly on AIP’s shoe-string beginnings: the days when such efforts
as The Day the World Ended, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, and I Was a Teenage Age Werewolf – not to
mention the sixty or so films featuring Hot Rods and monsters in “Indian-rubberâ€
masks - were knocked out quickly and cheaply by the indie.
It was true that AIP had certainly come a long way since
its incorporation in 1955. And while the
producers continued to hold tight to the company’s purse strings, Arkoff
acknowledged that they were presently allowing for budgets as high as $500,000
a picture on many of their recent color Panavision releases. This was a notable mention since such budgets
were five times the amount AIP had put up to fund their teen-market pictures of
the late 1950s.
The Poe films were bringing in more than a teenager
audience into the cinemas, and the producers recognized the trend. Since monster and horror films had played such
an important role in the AIP’s success, it was surprising to hear Arkoff sum up
part of the audience who loved macabre cinematic fare in less than charitable
terms. “The horror crowd falls into
three groups,†he told Eichelbaum, “the young people; the adult morons; and the
intelligent adults. It’s pretty difficult to cater to all of them in one
movie. But that’s what we try to do.â€
The company had certainly achieved an enviable level of
success since incorporation. As their
production budgets grew more generous, Arkoff and Nicholson were able to bring
into the fold some horror picture veterans who still held sway with fans of the
genre. Since the first Poe film House of Usher (1960), the producers
managed to secure the talents of such luminaries as Boris Karloff, Basil
Rathbone, Peter Lorre, Barbara Steele, Vincent Price, Ray Milland and Hazel
Court, with Lon Chaney Jr. waiting in the wings for his second act.
In his usual blunt manner, Arkoff partly attributed the
actors’ willingness to work with AIP on the series due to the fact, “Actors
like Poe. He has snob appeal.†That may have been a consideration of the
talent conscripted, but it’s also true that it was a welcome payday for these
(mostly) aging and typecast thespians. Many gathered had heydays dating back to Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s. It’s also true that due to the “Monster Boomâ€
of the late 1950s and early 1960s, these actors were thought highly and fondly of
by a generation who knew them primarily through Shock package TV screenings and such horror-film fan magazines as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Shock Monsters,
and Fantastic Monsters of the Films.
Of course, should anyone have misgivings that Arkoff was more
interested in the bottom line than in art, such suspicion would soon be
confirmed. The producer was, of course,
certainly correct in his assessment that “picture-making has to be a business.â€
He insisted that the business of filmmaking was simply “not a cheap individual
art, like painting or sculpting.†Fair
enough. But Arkoff, then a forty-three
year old former lawyer, went further, suggesting he didn’t care whether a film
was good or bad following release. He
was only interested if it clicked at the box office. He also wasn’t concerned if the films
produced by AIP would stand the test of time or be held in high regard in the
distant future. “We can’t let a movie
sit on a vine for thirty years waiting for recognition. If we can’t get a return, where will we get
the money for the next one?â€
Co-producer James H. Nicholson was somewhat more prosaic
in assessing the popularity of the horror pictures that AIP churned out with
regularity over the past seven years. He
offered the move-going public’s dimming fascination with horror films was
curiously reignited following World War II. Choosing to take the historical long-view, Nicholson offered there had always been a market for scary stories,
noting “Greek myths were horror subjects†in style and content. When questioned by a UPI correspondent if the
1960s horror film craze was just that – a passing fad – the producer insisted mythological
stories were as popular in 1964 as they had been during ancient times. “There are only three emotions,†Nicholson opined. “Deep sorrow, laughter and just plain
thrills, and our movies are filled with the last.â€