The Black Raven (1943)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Blistering performances.

Zucco, with his British accent, was usually a heavy -- a mad scientist or Professor Moriarty. Here, he's a man more or less of probity, although he has a secret past involving cheating his partner and seeing that the partner is convicted and sent up for the embezzlement. Now, however, Zucco runs a legitimate boarding house near the Canadian border.During a terrific thunderstorm that drenches the plastic studio greenery, all the bridges to Canada are washed away and a number of guests pile up at Zucco's Black Raven Inn, mostly escapees from the states. They're a diverse lot.First to show up is Zucco's ex partner, recently escaped from the slams and now ready to take violent revenge on Zucco. Next, a mousy clerk, Bryan Foulger, who has several thousand dollars he stole from the bank where he worked as a teller. A sneering gangster wanted for murder shows up and demands that Zucco arrange his transport across the border. Then an innocent young couple who have just eloped and are headed towards another country where they will be free of the interference of the girl's rich and nasty father. The rich and nasty father shows up last and makes a great pain of himself because, by coincidence, he owns the bank that Foulger, the timid teller, has fleeced and now he wants the money back.The angry, domineering bank owner is the first to go, by unknown hands. The movie's pace is so fast that his daughter isn't given any chance to grieve. Nobody else is particularly upset either. Everyone seems to have a motive to bash him in the head. A determined sheriff, who seems to have the IQ of a parsnip, shows up and recklessly blames the young would-be groom. But another murder takes place, and then another.It's nice to see George Zucco as a reasonable and half-way decent man, miscreant though he may be. But he puts little into the role. He's wooden, machine processed. The others -- all of them -- act like actors being paid to act in a low-budget B movie produced by PRC studios, which is not MGM. I kept thinking of what someone like James Mason would have done with the role.The young girl is Wanda McKay who had been a model and never did develop much of a movie career, probably because she changed her birth name, Quackenbush, which would have been memorable. She's cute as hell though. The groom's haste in getting her across the border is understandable.And the atmosphere is appealing -- a windy downpour beating against the windows and everyone trapped inside the inn. The set dresser, alas, didn't exert himself. The interior of the inn itself isn't very spooky and apart from one or two conspicuous shadows, the lighting is flat and uninspired.Watch it when you can't sleep and are too dopey to care.

A group of strangers holed up at a quaint lodge (The Black Raven) during a fierce storm discover that one of the guests has embezzled a large sum of money and is carrying the stash en route to Canada. Predictably, murder and subterfuge soon follow as the parties vie for the tainted bounty.Solid cast includes Zucco as the inn's apparently benevolent manager, Glenn Strange (a sort of 1930's version of Mike Lane) his lanky, trusted goon and Byron Foulger as the cashed-up fugitive. Wanda McKay and Bob Randall play an eloping couple, pursued by the bride's possessive father (Middlemass) who has vetoed the nuptials. It's the typical assortment of guests each brining their own travails to bear upon the common intrigue and nobody is above suspicion.Zucco is a masterful thespian and his patient, assured (not to mention immaculately attired) presence easily eclipses the surrounding mediocrity, an otherwise average tale that plays the clichéd formula 'dark & stormy night with strangers' with few innovations or surprises.

If you pay careful attention to David Chudnow's music, "The Black Raven" qualifies as more comical than creepy. This atmospheric, black & white, whodunit about one stormy night near the Canadian border in a motel on the American side is a solid, entertaining triple murder tale about greed, corruption, and revenge. Prolific director Sam Newfield, who helmed "Hitler—Beast of Berlin" as well as 168 other films, teams up with frequent collaborator Fred Myton. Based on Myton's original screenplay, "The Black Raven" is a formulaic but polished potboiler with clever dialogue and strong performances. Amazingly, this Producer's Releasing Corporation B-movie is a respectably done programmer that preserves the unities of time, place, and setting to a single evening.The casting of Glenn Strange and Charles Middleton is worth mentioning. Better known as Frankenstein's monster in "House of Frankenstein" (1944), "House of Dracula" (1945), and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), Strange plays an over-sized simpleton who doesn't know his own strength and behaves like a coward when he trips over two corpses. Furthermore, this represents one of Strange's more loquacious characters. Meanwhile, Middleton—billed here as Charlie—plays an incompetent but honest sheriff rather than a dastardly villain. Remember, the hatchet-faced Middleton starred as Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon" (1936), "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars" (1938), and "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" (1940)." These roles provided departures from the usual ones that Strange and Middleton played.A variety of motley characters show up one night during a thunderous downpour at Amos Bradford's Black Raven Inn. Bradford (George Zucco, who played Professor Moriarty in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes") is a rather suspicious character himself who specializes in smuggling felons across the border into Canada. Racketeer on the run Mike Bardoni (Noel Madison of "G-Men") arrives after Whitey Cole. Cole (I. Stanford Jolley of "Ghost of Zorro") has broken out of prison and wanted to exact revenge on Bradford. "I was so anxious to get square with you that I busted out," says Cole as he holds Bradford at gunpoint, "I could've knocked you off when I just came in but I had to face the judge when he handed me my rap and I want you to do the same." When Bradford's oafish handyman, Andy (Glenn Strange of "Red River"), enters the inn, he distracts Cole long enough for Bradford to disarm him. Andy ties Cole up and stashes him in Bradford's room. Cole believes that Bradford double-crossed him. Bradford defends his behavior. "All of a sudden you got too smart to take orders," he points out to Cole, "When I saw what was coming, I protected myself." Another ambitious gangster, Tim Winfield (Robert Middlemass of "Cain and Mabel"), has forced Bardoni out of the rackets after Bardoni built them up, and the authorities want to arrest Bardoni. Bardoni wants to get across the border before the law catches up with him. The next guest at the Black Raven is a long-suffering, milquetoast bank employee, Horace Weatherby (a spectacled Bryon Foulger of "Sullivan's Travels") who has embezzled $50-thousand so that he can finally enjoy life to the hilt. There is a hilarious moment when Weatherby argues with a roadblock watchman (Jimmy Aubrey of "Swamp Woman") during the storm about when the bridge to Canada will be rebuilt. When he arrives at the motel, Weatherby clutches a satchel for dear life and arouses Bardoni's curiosity. As he is registering, Weatherby neglects the satchel for a split-second and Bardoni knocks it off the counter and presto it falls open and wads of bills can be seen. The next two guests are an unmarried couple, Allen Bentley (Robert Livingston of "The Lone Ranger Rides Again") and Tim Winfield's estranged, under-age daughter Lee (Wanda McKay of "Raiders of Ghost City"), who are trying to elope across the border into Canada so that they can get married. Lee's father has thwarted their efforts to obtain a marriage license. The last guest to show up is none other than infamous Tim Winfield, and he calls up the state police about the same time that the storm knocks out the telephone lines.Winfield recognizes Weatherby and appropriates the $50-thousand from the unwilling bank employee. Not long afterward, Andy discovers Winfield's body, but they cannot find the loot. When the sheriff (Charlie Middleton) shows up about 34 minutes into this 65 minute opus, the lawman arrests Allen Bentley because Lee's father had slapped Bentley in the presence of both Bradford and Andy. Bradford steadfastly refuses to believe that Bentley killed Tim Winfield. "I'm not going to have that boy take a rap," Bradford vows to Bardoni, "for a murder he didn't commit." Nevertheless, Bentley escapes from the sheriff's custody with the help of Lee and Bradford. In no time at all, the sheriff finds Bentley locked up in the basement with Weatherby and Andy where Bardoni had put them while he searched for the $50-thousand. As the triumphant sheriff returns with Bentley in custody, Andy discovers another corpse—this time Bardoni. Clearly, Bentley couldn't have killed Bardoni.George Zucco plays a sinister character, but he spends most of his time defending young Bentley. This is one of Zucco's more sympathetic villains and the actor anchors this melodrama with his commanding presence. Sam Newfield handles the complicated Myton plot with aplomb. Rarely does a moment go by without some important bit of business being inserted into the action. Despite its low-budget origins, "The Black Raven" ranks as a well-written yarn. Just about everybody is implicated in Winfield's murder. The revelation of Winfield's killer comes as something of a shock because of all the red herrings and the meticulous characterization. Newfield likes to let one character speak and show another character's reaction so that he can throw you off the scent of the guilty party. Poetic justice is served in the long run. Altogether, this underrated romp is pretty good considering its meager budget.

***SPOILERS*** Fate brings six people together one night at the Black Raven Inn thats on the Canadian USA border. The first person who shows up is escaped convict Whitey Cole, I. Stanford Jolly, who has a score to settle with the Inn's owner Bradford, George Zucco. Having been double-crossed by Bradford and losing his half of the Black Raven Inn Cole wants him to pay for his backstabbing but is subdued by Bradford and his handyman at the Inn Andy, Glen Strange, and tied up and held captive in the basement until the police come to arrest him.Soon another customer arrives Mike Bardoni, Noel Madison, a wanted hood who's trying to make it across the border to Canada to escape the law. The next four persons who arrive at the Inn is Horace Weatherby, Bryon Foulger, a bank clerk who just embezzled $50,000.00 from his bank and the couple of Allen Bently, Bob Randell, and his fiancé Lee Winfield, Wanda McCay, who are also trying to elope to Canada to escape Lee's domineering and gangster father Tim Winfield, Robert Middleass. Winfield also arrives at the Inn in order to stop his daughter from going through with her marriage to Allen. Winfield is also the man who brought Bardoni down as a top gang leader in the world of organized crime and you just can imagine what happened when the two men end up in the same room together.Cole unties himself and escapes into the woods as Winfield recognizes Weatherby from his picture in the newspapers as the bank embezzler and gets him to give him the $50,000.00 so, as he tells Weatherby, he'll return it to the police and nothing would happen to him. Earlier in the movie Brdoni noticed the money Weatherby was carrying in a satchel and wanted to take and keep the loot for himself but as it turns out both Winfield & Bardoni end up getting murdered, who did it?"The Black Raven" isn't one of George Zucco's best but it would be watchable only if the lighting in the movie was better. It looked like the movie was filmed in a mineshaft with some scenes so dark that it was impossible to make out who was in them. There was also an attempt of having some humor in the film with a bumbling sheriff, Charlie Middleton, and a cowardly Inn worker Andy. Glen Strange who played Andy is almost twice as big, at six foot seven inches, as anyone in the movie and him being scared to death of every little sound and shadow came across as phony as a three dollar bill. It was left up to Bradford as well the audience, the dopey Sheriff was no help at all, to figure out who the killer or killers were and the ending when he was discovered by Bradford did surprise me.