The other evening it was dark and stormy-like and it put me in a real mood for an ‘Old Dark House’ style film and in my research on said sub-genre of films, I came across an interesting film that I’d not heard of before: The Black Raven (1943). At first my brain immdiated tried to tell me that someone had made a mistake and the were either talking about The Black Cat (1934) or The Raven (aka Le Corbeau, 1943). Why? Because I’m on my 47th journey around the solar system and there is a metric shit ton (could also be described as an assload…depending on where you’re from) of strange cinema rattling around in my head. This one however is a little whodunnit starring George Zucco as the owner of The Black Raven Inn. SOLD!
Anyway, I discoverd that the film ran a scant sixty-one minutes.
It was only 7pm. Hardly a full evening’s entertainment. Then I had an epiphany: DOUBLE FEATURE, BABY! Immediately I set about finding a suitable back-half to my evening of mystery and whodunnit-ery. I pulled out my ‘Tales of Terror – 200 Horror Films’ box set from Mill Creek and started to peruse the handy little booklet listing all the films in the set and came across A Shriek in the Night (1933). Ginger Rogers (before she danced with Fred Astaire!) as a reporter investigating murders in an apartment building? Bam! And this one comes in at sixty-six minutes! That’s the kinda backside you want on a double feature!
As luck would have it, as I was just about to get my little murder party underway, my good friend….we’ll call them Mr. Debbie, came round and decided to hang out and watch with me. I’m always down for a shared cinematic experience and Mr. Debbie says that they may have some thoughts to share on the films as well. As this is a double feature, and each film is only about an hour long, I figured we’d make one big ol’ review of it! So as the Black Eyed Peas say in the radio edit of thier song: “Let’s Get It Started!”
The Black Raven (1943)
Year – 1943
Director – Sam Newfield
Writer – Fred Myton
Principal cast – George Zucco, Wanda McKay, Noel Madison, Robert Livingston, Byron Foulger, Glenn Strange
Country / language – United States / English
Runtime 61 MInutes
Original release – May 31, 1943
Studio and distributor – Producers Releasing Corporation
Original certification Production Code: Administration certificate no. 9170
Alternate – titles None verified
Alternate Titles:
France – Le Corbeau Noir (“The Black Raven”)
Brazil – O Corvo Negro (“The Black Raven”)
Costa – Rica La Casa del Mal Agüero (“The House of Ill Omen”)
Mexico – Casa del mal Agüero (“House of Ill Omen”)
Russia – Чёрный ворон (“Black Raven”)
Yugoslavia/Serbian – Crni gavran (“Black Raven”)
how to Watch
VHS and LaserDisc
VHS – A 1987 review discusses The Black Raven under “On video cassette,” but does not identify the label. Goldstar Video later issued it as Tales of Horror, Vol. 13; the series ran in 1991–92.
LaserDisc – No commercial release verified. I found no catalog number, jacket, or distributor listing for this film on LaserDisc.
DVD
2001 – Crime Stoppers Collection Vol. II – With Fog Island and Dick Tracy vs. Cueball
2002 – Retromedia, The Mad Monster / The Black Raven
2002 – Alpha Video, standalone
2003 – Alpha Video, Mystery Collection – Four DVDs: The Bat, The Black Raven, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, and Nancy Drew
2004 – Roan Group/Troma, The Black & Blue Collection-With Bluebeard and Black Dragons
2005 – Mill Creek, 50 Movie Pack: Suspense Classics
2007 – Mill Creek, Mystery Collection: 250 Movies
2008 – Emson, 50 Mystery Classics Five-disc set
2008 – Mystery Classics, Vol. 7: 4 Feature Films – With Dishonored Lady, Nancy Drew, Reporter, and City of Missing Girls
2010 – Pacific Entertainment, 25 Mystery Classics
2014 – FCE, The Old Dark House Collection
2016 – Mill Creek, Crime Wave: 50 Movie MegaPack
2017 – Grapevine Video, George Zucco Double Feature with Dead Men Walk
2018 – Sinister Cinema, PRC, Vol. 1 Four-film DVD collection
2021 – Sinister Cinema, standalone (Transfer upgrade)
2024 – Alpha Video, Creepy Old Guys: The Best of Lionel Atwill and George Zucco Five-DVD set
2026 – Film Masters, newly restored standalone (Manufactured-on-demand DVD)
Blu- Ray
2014 – FCE, The Old Dark House Collection
2018 – Retromedia, The Ape / The Black Raven
2026 – Film Masters, Newly Restored Archive Collection Standalone restored HD BD-R
Streaming
Free, with ads – Tubi, Plex, Fawesome, and Prime Video’s free-with-ads option, Roku Channel and Sling.
Free full-film uploads – Internet Archive offers browser playback and downloads.
Cult Cinema Classics on YouTube – has a full-film upload.
Free with a participating library card -Hoopla. Access depends on your library.
Subscription – Prime Video, (also on it’s Fandor add-on channel, FlixFling, Troma NOW, and Artiflix. Artiflix’s film-specific offer is listed on JustWatch.)
Rent or buy digitally – Amazon Video and FlixFling.
The Set-up
George Zucco stars as Amos Bradford, proprietor of The Black Raven Inn, a small lodge near the Canadian border on the eastern side of the United States. It never explicitly says where, but to me, it felt very New England and so I choose to believe it’s in the upper reaches of Vermont…but really it doesn’t truly matter. Could just as easily be upstate New York…which might actually make sense based on the guestlist that is briefly shown. I’m already getting horrible off-track (good to see somethings never change, eh?) Anyway, Bradford is a former criminal mastermind known in the underworld as The Raven. He would use his establishment to help fellow denizens of the underworld disappear over the border.
Bradford and his assistant, Andy, are going about their nightly routine as we join them. A face appears in one of the windows, peering in and a man with a gun enters. Turns out this is Whitey Cole: one of Bradford’s former associate who has broken out of prison and sought him out for some good old fashioned revenge. The way Whitey see’s it, Bradford sold him out to save his neck.
Thus begins a series of arrivals. See, the thunderstorm has washed the bridge out just up the road. This bridge is the only one for miles and this brings our gallery of characters together. There’s Horace Weatherby, a bank clerk who has embezzeled fifty thousand dollars and is escaping to Canada. We’ve got Allen Bentley and Lee Winfield, a young couple trying to elope to Canada and escape Lee’s father, Tim Winfield, a crooked political figure who is persuing to couple trying to prevent the marriage. He also arrives at the hotel. And finally we’ve got Mike Bardoni, a racketeer and total pile of garbage trying to cross the border as well.
If you’ve ever seen one of these old single location whodunnit type flicks, you know EXACTLY what’s about to happen. It doesn’t take long before one of these folks ends up dead…and that poor bastard is old Mr. Winfield himself. Just about everyone in the house has a reason to kill him….I mean, honestly he’s a piece of human excrement.
That Sherif show up thanks to Winfield attempting to call them to report that Allen kidnapped her and cause issues for the young lovebirds. A real dim-witted know it all who’s already made up his mind about the guilty party before even starting an investigation. This Mayberry reject is played by Charles B. Middleton.
What ensues is chaos as the bodies start to pile up, agendas are revealed and characters lurk around the shadows of the old inn. Being a flick from the early 40’s it ends up wrapping up fairly quickly with it’s final series of reveals, but I found them to be satisfactory.
The Midnight Take
The sky was dark gray and thunder ominously rumbled in the distance as I fired up the flick. It was the absolute perfect atmosphere and really put me in the mood. I opted to watch this via Amazon Prime and the video was fairly crisp and clear. The screen grabs that you see on this site were taken via Tubi (Amazon’s DRM gave me the dreaded “Black Box of Doom”) which is why they look a bit washed out with tons of old artifacting. If I’m being completely honest though, I’m kinda mad at myself for not watchign it this way. Sure the image was good on Amazon and made for a pleasant watching experience, but really, it would have been MUCH more Midnight Cinephile to watch it in the washed out, slightly degraded condition that appears on Tubi. Live and learn, I guess.
I’ve got a real soft spot for old ‘potboilers’ from the 30’s and 40’s. Now these flicks were also known by another moniker: Poverty Row films. True, not the most flattering, but dammit, I’d still wear that shit like a badge! Povety Row was a what the low-budget, gritty studios were called. The studios that operated in the shadow of the giants of the industry like MGM and Paramount. This flick was produced by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), who apparently were considered the absolute bottom of the Poverty Row studios like Republic Pictures, Liberty Pictures and of course Monogram Pictures. How’s that for a distinction?! “There ain’t NOBODY broker than you, PRC!”
Honestly, I think that gives the flick it’s charm. Sam Newfield, the films director also had somewhat of a reputation for having a strict methodology for shooting his films: “Shoot and move on!” This dude was like a proto Ed Wood! And he was prolific AF! Seriuosly. Newfield has two hundred and seventy nine films to his credit! 279! From what I’ve found, he would churn out between twevlve and twenty of these flicks A YEAR! And here i am chugging along at a bout 1 film review per week. I’m such a slacker. Further adding to the Woodosity (I think I might have coined a new term there) of this film, you can clearly see that the sets were constructed on the cheap. The staircase banister in partincular seems to be held together with a lick and a prayer.
Historically, critics have been a bit harsh on this one. Leonard Malton gave it 1.5 starts out of 4.
John Stanley didn’t have much good to say about it either in Creature Features, giving it one and a half stars and stating: “It’s woefully written by Fred Myton and directed by Sam Newfield.” Man, that’s harsh.
Is it a masterpiece? Fuck no!
But is it woeful? Also: Fuck no!
Yes, the film has all the usual problems a low budget production has: it’s cheap, the script probably could have used another revision or two, the acting is a bit wonky in places. But again, honestly, to me that adds to the charm of it all. I wasn’t bored at all in the scant sixty-one minute run time.
This perfectly scratched the itch that I had for an Old Dark House feel, with a bit of a hodgepodge whodunnit and some gangster overtones to it. Plus, I really love flicks that all take place in a singular location. It’s got some great actors in it: George Zucco, who appeared in Universal horror classics like The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb and of course House of Frankenstein. Charles B. Middleton played Ming The Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials of the late 30’s and early 40’s! That’s not nothing, folks!
I was even pleased with the cinematography. A furtive shadow moving along the basement wall, atmospheric shots of an overgrown country road that the various character’s vehicles are traveling down towards the washed out bridge, open windows blowing in rain, dark figures lurking in the shadow of an underlit room. There is atmosphere to burn here, guys.
Mr Debbie had some thoughts on this flick as well: “Trapped in a rainy motel with $50,000 in stolen cash and a sheriff who couldn’t find his own gun? Hah! Hahaha! Oh, my pet… that’s not a bad night. That’s a business opportunity.”
Okay, here’s where I’d normally stick The Midnight Cinephile Tally, but instead I’m adding the second feature below and then we’ll tally them together side by side!
A Shriek in the Night (1933)
Runtime: 66 minutes; AFI also records a 70-minute length.
Rating: Not rated.
Original Release Date: April 18, 1933; New York opening July 21, 1933.
Director: Albert Ray
Writers: Frances Hyland (screenplay); Kurt Kempler (story)
Starring: Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, Harvey Clark, Purnell Pratt, Lillian Harmer, Arthur Hoyt
Country: United States
Original Language: English
Genre: Mystery, crime thriller
Format: Black-and-white sound film, approximately 1.37:1
Alternate Titles
France – Un hurlement dans la nuit (A Howl in the Night)
Spanish – Un grito en la noche. (A Scream in the Night)
Portuguese – Um Grito na Noite. (A Scream in the Night)
Russian – Вопль в ночи. (A Cry in the Night)
How to Watch
VHS: Memory Lane Video distributed a U.S. VHS in 1984. A 1998 Madacy two-tape Ginger Rogers set pairs the film with Heartbeat.
LaserDisc: I couldn’t find any laserDisc releases for this one.
DVD / Blu-ray
2003 – Alpha Video 2026 – Leomark Studios (It is manufactured on demand as a BD-R)
2003 – Artiflix
2022 – Mill Creek: Horror Classics: 50 Movies
Streaming
Free – Internet Archive, Plex, Tubi, YouTube
Subscription -fuboTV, MGM+, IndieFlix, and FilmBox+, there are also channel options through Amazon and Roku.
Philo’s listing specifies an MGM+ add-on.
The Set-up
This flick is pre-code and it absolutely shows. The opening credits appear over a very gothic looking apartment building in New York City. Well, a matte painting of a gothic apartment building in New York City, but you get the idea. It is night time and there are clouds mostly obscuring the moon high above. It’s all very atmospheric.
Cut to a city sidewalk. A high pitched shriek pierces the night and we watch as a body plummets past and hits the ground. Yes, you read that right, we actually see the dude biff it right on to the ground! Granted, it’s obviously a mannequin, but still…that’s pretty gnarly for a 1933 film. We’re talking the same year that King Kong and Duck Soup hit theaters! Anyway, turns out that the poor bastard who took the express elevator down was Arthur Harker, a wealthy millionaire philanthropist (who also just happened to own gothic, self-named Harker Apartments.
Reporter Pat Morgan (Ginger Rogers) has already spent three weeks undercover as Harker’s secretary to investigate his rumored connections to an underworld racketeer named Joe Martini (Maurice Black). Joe. Fucking. Martini. Is that not the greatest underworld mob name ever? If I ever need an alias, I know what I’m using. I digress. Ted Rand (Lyle Talbot) is a reporter from a competing newspaper sneaks into the crime scene. He picks up the phone at the same time she is trying to secretly phone her newspaper to give them the details and impersonates the newsman at her agency, then calls HIS paper and give them the scoop. What a dick. Did I mention that Ted also wants to marry Pat? Hell of a way to show it. These two bicker back and forth throughout the film.
Following Harker’s death, she discovers a cryptic card among his letters featuring a hissing serpent and the words, “You Will Hear It”….wich both Mr. Debbie and I found to be rather creepy. Inspector Russell (Purnell Pratt) initially believes the death to be an accident or suicide. Until another body is discovered the next day. Same card is in the trashcan of this apartment. We are somewhat witness to this murder in one of early cinema’s creepiest sillouhettes. Those who are paying attention might start to get an idea what the card means.
As more bodies pile up, all having died in a similar manner and all having recieved above mentioned “Serpent Card’ Ted and Pat continue to bicker and try to “out-scoop” each other. Which honestly probably is stacked in Ted’s favor since Pat was fired when her editor saw that Ted’s paper got the full story thanks to his little impersonation prank. Honestly, I’ve seen some fucked up relationships in my time, but this one is truly not very healthy. Pat and Ted decide to put thier squabble aside to try and catch the murderer, which….well…you’ll need to watch the film to find out.
The Midnight Take
As I mentioned before, this is a pre-code picture. What does that mean exactly?
“Pre-Code” covers that wild stretch from around 1930, when sound had taken over the movies, to July 1934, when Hollywood finally started enforcing the Production Code. The rules were already on the books. Studios just weren’t in much of a hurry to follow them. With the Depression keeping audiences at home, filmmakers gave them a reason to buy a ticket: sex, violence, scandal, and characters who didn’t always get punished for having a good time. In otherwords, it was like the wild west of filmmaking.
A Shriek in the Night was produced by Allied Pictures Company, yet another Poverty Row studio. These studios operatoed with even greater autonomy than the big dogds, leaning into far more lurid topics, like serial killers, to compete with the big boys. This film had a nasty streak runnign through it! From that visceral rooftop plunge that started the film to the voyeuristic view of the murderer donning a gas mask and clearing pumping poisonous gas into an apartment, to the downright nasty little calling card the killer sent to his victims in advance. After 1934, studios were required to greatly tone down the violence and mechanisms of murder shown in films for fear that it would give real world murderers ideas. You know, kind of like how they still blame the movies for all of society’s ills.
The way that Ted and Pat treat each other was also something that would change after the enforcement of the code. Inspector Russell at one point outright says that murders are more fun to investigate than suicides! MORE FUN!?! Today, that sort of thing wouldn’t even move the needle….but in 1933? Come on! That’s just downright scandelous! Not to mention Ted mentions frequenting speakeasies, which in 1933 were extremely illegal. This is far from the polished films that came later where criminals were handled cleanly authority figures were always treated as shining beacons of light and goodness and always above reproach.
More than once, Mr. Debbie and I exchanged glances, downright surprised by some of the dialog and lurid conversations that occured within the film. At one point both Ted and Pat are at the morgue trying to get more information and Ted and the morgue attendant start trading insults. And we’re not talking a good natured jab here or there, we’re talking hitting below the belt kind of stuff, especially when Ted says to Pat “You know, Eddie’s wife got him the job here at the morgue. She hoped he’d take the hint and die!” HEY-OH! What a zinger! Sweet Baby Cthulhu, with friends like these….
I’ve seen arguement back and forth in the film community about whether or not this is a horror movie. Some stating that it’s a straight up crime flick, others saying that it’s just pure noir. I’ve seen arguements calling it a ‘police procedural’ (which I think is absurd….they barely follow procedure). I even saw one person try to say that it was a ‘romantic comedy with thriller undertones’. While I wouldn’t call this a straight up horror film, I wouldn’t call it exactly any of those either things either. There are certainly some unsettling elements, including a moment in the finale in which Mr. Debbie literally exclaimed “DID…DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?” Okay, well that’s not exactly what they said, but I’m not giving spoilers here, so close enough. The point is we were both shocked by what we had just witnessed. The film can really fit into any of that branch on the cinematic tree…horror…thriller…noir…crime…it’s really kind of a hodgepodge of them all. But it works. I was throughly entertained as was Mr. Debbie.
And Mr. Debbie’s two cents?: “Sssssssso a calling card? Hah! Hahaha! The only paper I ever leave on a corpse is a forged will.”
I see what you did there, friend. Well played.
The Black Raven
A Shriek in the Night
Four Deaths. One off screen, two onscreen. One death is a shooting but not a murder.
Four Deaths. One suicide, Three murders. Nasty ones too!
The Black Raven
A Shriek in the Night
–Storms that strand an entire cast at a remote inn: 1
– Inns run by men with criminal pasts: 1
– Escaped convicts out for revenge: 1
– Gangsters, corrupt politicians, and embezzlers sharing a roof:
Far too many for a restful night.
– Cellar shadows and people sneaking where they shouldn’t: Several
– Stolen cash making everyone look guilty: $50,000 worth
– Shrieks announcing another body: 2
– Bodies falling from apartment windows: 1
– Ominous serpent warning cards: Several
– Hissing poison gas in the building’s pipes: 1 deeply unpleasant
murder method
– Mysterious late-night calls from someone known only as “Bee”: 1
– Respectable philanthropists receiving secret visits from
rackateers: 1
The Black Raven
A Shriek in the Night
No skin in this one. But we’ve got sleaze a plenty! No fewer than four unsavory characters (five if you include the cop!). Embezzelment, political corruption, racketeering, extortion and murder most foul.
Again, no skin. There is sleaze coming out of the friggin woodworks on this one though! The entire picture just feels sleazy. Everythign from the murders to the visual depictions of murder to the sexual innuendos to the glee with with police will investigate a murder. Taken in the context of the time, I imagine that this was quite the sleazy film when it came out.
Amount absolute garbage human beings that populate the films: Shockingly almost all of them. The Black Raven is rife with lothsome characters. The fact that after the first murder you can’t figure out which scumbag did it is quite telling. A Shriek in the Night has a cast of characters with enough scum and villany to fill a cantina, if you know what I mean.
Total amount of money spent on making these films (combined): Between $35k – $90k. This is an estimate of course, but for context in 1933 the average house cost $4,050. in 1943 a house cost $3,600! There was a price dip due to the economy, due to World War II. But you get the picture. In 1939, it cost between $3.85 and $4.25 millon to make Gone With the Wind.
Best Line:
The Black Raven: “With your imagination, you could see the Statue of Liberty do the conga!”
A Shriek in the Night: “I warned you against thinking!”
Lesson Learned:
The Black Raven: Always make sure your AirBNB host is a SUPERHOST!
A Shriek in the Night: Open a damn window once in a while! It could save you’re life!
Product Placement Award:
Let’s be real here. There weren’t any product placements back in these days. I’m not making stuff up just to fill in a space. I do have SOME standards, you know!
MVP:
The Black Raven: Whoever ran the rain machine in this flick.
A Shriek in the Night: Whoever designed those creepy little Serpent Cards! I kinda want to make some up and give them to friends and family around the holidays. They know me, so they won’t even think it’s weird!
The most 1943/1933 thing in these films:
The Black Raven (1943): Lee and Allen try to elope across the Canadian border because her politically connected father has blocked their marriage at home. When he catches them, he threatens Allen with a kidnapping charge because Lee isn’t quite 21.
A Shriek in the Night (1933): Pat gets offered her reporting job back, and Ted takes the phone to declare, “A woman’s place is in the home.” Seconds later, he has to borrow three dollars from the maid for their marriage license.
Why is that there???
The Black Raven: Why the hell does a tiny little motel in the middle of bumfuck who knows where have a valet?
A Shriek in the Night: Ted’s pink toothbrush. I mean…sure you gotta brush your teeth. But why the hell did it need to be mentioned that it was pink? It wasn’t even played for laughs, it was just….weird.
Snack: Garlic Bread with Apple Jelly.
Drink: An ice cold glass of Dr. Pepper or Cherry Kool Aid.
Pizza Roll Ratings!
The Black Raven:
A Shriek in the Night:
The Midnight Quotient:
The Black Raven:
A Shriek in the Night:
Final Thoughts:
This was an absolute blast and a solid double feature, made even better because I got to watch it with my good friend, Mr. Debbie. I know that they enjoyed the hell out of this one too.
The Black Raven, was an aboslutel blast. It completely scratched that Old Dark House itch that I had and I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better movie to fit the whole feel of the evening. It may be a poverty row potboiler with wonky acting, questionable logic and a staircase bannister that couldn’t save a hamster from falling, but damnit it’s got it where it counts. Ominous thunderstorms, a cast of cookie cutter characters and shadows slinking along the walls. Honestly, if that isn’t Midnight Cinephile, I don’t know what is
A Shriek in the Night really caught me by surprise with it’s pre-code shenanigans. It’s a sleazy and at times mean spirited little film that doesn’t pull it’s punches when it comes to the more lurid aspects of it’s story and I’m glad that it doesn’t. I can only imagine the stir that it caused with audiences who saw it in the theaters. While I really dug on the vibe of The Black Raven more, I’ve gotta say that this film really won the night with it’s “zero fucks to give” attitude.
I can most assuredly tell you that this will NOT be the last double feature by a longshot! Until next time, my friends. Keep watching films after the witching hour and remember…midnight is where the day begins.
