BlackRaven

The Black Raven (1943)

This is another classic mystery movie where a group of people are all brought together in an old dark house or in this case an Inn called the Black Raven. The proprietor of the inn is a man named Amos Bradford, who has some criminal ties. In the middle of the storm that of course has washed out the bridge an escaped criminal with a history with Bradford, a gangster on the run to Canada, a couple trying to elope with the woman’s politically connected father in pursuit, and a mousey bank clerk with a pile of embezzled money. Toss in a handyman that is scared of his own shadow and a dimwitted sheriff and you have the makings for fun. When the money comes up missing and the woman’s father turns up dead the sheriff is called to sort out who did it. After much sneaking around the spooky Inn during the storm everything is sorted out and everyone gets what is coming to them.

Man I really love these old mystery movies. Sure they all follow the same basic formula with a storm normally trapping the strangers together with murder and mayhem to follow. But as is the case with a lot of the horror movies that I watch I love to jump into a nice comfortable movie that I can kick back and just enjoy. I don’t need everything that I watch to challenge me as a viewer. Here the story is again very familiar, but well paced and well written. There is a neat twist at the end that most of these movies don’t have when it is revealed that not everything can be neatly wrapped up as the actions of one killer! Glen Strange, who is more familiar to genre fans as the man who stepped into Frankenstein’s shoes as the monster in the later movies, is really surprisingly good as the scared out of his wits handyman. He is responsible for much of the humor of the movie as he bumbles around, and of course is the one that finds all the bodies. Also really good is the criminally ignored George Zucco, who did many lower budget genre pictures but just never caught on with the horror fans. He plays Amos Bradford and is great as the only man who really knows what is going on at the Inn. The rest of the cast isn’t given much to do, but are all right.

Now to be fair the movie does drag some in the middle, in spite of being less than an hour long. I’m also not sure that a modern audience will enjoy the ending as much as I did, nor will they enjoy the humor as much either. These movies can be an acquired taste, and only the best of them (like the Old Dark House) readily appeal to everyone. So as much as I liked The Black Raven to be fair and objective I can only really recommend it to fans of the old mystery movies of the 30s and 40s. This movie can be had on a couple of the budget DVD sets from Mill Creek for a really low price. For more information head over to their website at http://www.millcreekent.com/

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer