The Raven

I realize he's dead since quite some time now, but I sincerely hope that the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe still has enough strength and energy left to rise from the depths of eternal darkness and HAUNT Ulli Lommel (as well as everyone else involved in this blasphemous turkey) until he opts for premature burial. Yes, I do realize that sounds cruel, but … have you seen this movie?!? "The Raven" is the type of film of which you initially think: "Hey, how bad can it possibly be?" The film is inspired by the writings of the legendary Edgar Allen Poe, so as long as the script remains faithful to its source, very few things can go wrong. Clearly a lot of things can go wrong when Ulli Lommel is in charge! The plot is a seemingly endless bunch of retarded nonsense that has NOTHING to do with the original poem, the cast members are a gathering of insufferable losers that don't even deserve to star in an amateurish YouTube video, the digital camera-work and editing appear to be the work of toddlers and the arrogant wannabe-artistic atmosphere nearly causes you to vomit. Lenore is a twenty-something untalented singer whose mind is inexplicably linked to Poe's and he even appears to her in nightmares. There's a killer (the penis-munching freak from "Cannibal") on the loose and Edgar commands her to go after him. Or something like that, whatever, nobody cares anyway, because it's all pure rubbish. Lommel himself makes a brief appearance as the girl's grandfather when she's five. He wears a ridiculous eye-patch and a sea captain's hat, which pretty much states that he hasn't got the slightest bit of self-dignity left. Once upon a time the promising director of the video-nasty classic "The Bogey Man", Ulli Lommel now just appears to be on a mission to become the world's record holder of repugnant films linked to his name. The amount of crap this guy unleashed upon the world is literally incredible. "B.T.K Killer", "Zombie Nation", "Green River Killer" … You better just avoid everything he did.

Enough about this piece of junk! Back in the 1960's, director/producer Roger Corman made a cycle of films based on the writings of Edgar Allen Poe; all starring the magnificent Vincent Price and all close to brilliant. Corman's reputation is questionable and his nickname is "King of the B's", but he surely had (and probably still has) more sense of class and finesse in his smallest toe than Ulli Lommel in his entire body.

I wish i could give it a 0. I'm doing a project on Edgar Allan Poe so I though it might be a good idea to watch some movies relating to Poe so I went down to blockbuster to get this, and while waiting in line we read the description and we all knew it was going to be bad, but oh my god I couldn't imagine it would have been this terrible. The story doesn't even make any sense and there's all this random crap in it that doesn't have anything to do with anything. I've seen some bad movies (we actually try and find the shittiest looking movie we can find for fun) but this one easily has the lowest budget I've seen, it looks like they just used a regular video camera and couldn't afford real actors so they just had friends act in it. Afterwards my friend even said "God, I can't believe we didn't stop watching it" I even just made this account so I could comment on it.

Just one thing.

I am German. And I feel ashamed by movies like this, by Lommel, by Boll, and all those other German directors, that recently entered Hollywood to produce the worst movies, that an human mind can ever imagine. This movie right here actually is even worse than anything I could imagine before.

So... Just understand: it's not our fault... Nobody in Germany knows these guys, nobody knows, where they are coming from and who pays them money to produce this. We like good movies, too, and yes, we hate these guys, too.

I honestly feel ashamed. As a German, I apologize for this. Thank you for your attention.

I have no clue why a movie of this quality was released to major video stores. It's supposedly based on the Poe story, though the main connection is the lead character is named Lenore.

But this is a glorified amateur movie. It's shot on digital video. The "actors" seem to be friends of the movie maker and the acting is the quality of porn acting, without the sex scenes to dull the pain. It's "arty", which can be described as random video shots with no context or meaning with generic music in the background.

Ed Wood made bad movies with intent, with passion. This is just utter tripe, made to make a cheap buck. Read the reviews of the director's other films and you'll see a pattern.

Avoid!

I watched this thinking it would be good. Im a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan. I sat back thinking it would be great. Such potential. Then it started. That is where the trouble began. The first 5 minutes make absolutely no sense. It's here, there and everywhere. Once the story starts, it has so little to do with the poem by Poe that its irritating. It was also very, very obviously done with the lowest possible budget imaginable. If you like good movies, pass. If you like B movies, pass. This is worse than a B movie. They don't actually show you much of any of the killings. You get the joy of seeing only shadows and being left to guess just what happened. When they do show you the dead bodies, you see blood, but strangely no wounds. The one good thing I will say on this movie is that at least they had the good sense to put trailers for some good movies on this DVD. Do yourself the favor of skipping this terribly made movie. You will be very, very glad you did.