"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Film

"The Raven" was recreated as a hallucination of Poe's in the 1915 silent film The Raven. A fictionalized biography, it starred Henry B. Walthall as Poe.

The 1935 film The Raven has Bela Lugosi as a Poe-obsessed doctor and costars Boris Karloff. The film has a interpretive dance of "The Raven."

In 1942, Fleischer Studios created a two-reel Technicolor cartoon based upon "The Raven" which turned the story of the poem into a lighthearted comedy.

A Bugs Bunny cartoon has Bugs reading a few lines from the poem, starting with the words, "While I nodded nearly napping."

In 1963, Roger Corman directed The Raven, a comedy very loosely based on the poem.

In the 1967 stop-motion film Mad Monster Party, Baron von Frankenstein tests his new potion on a raven, and lets it fly until it lands on a tree branch. Watching the resulting explosion, he says with a chuckle, "Quoth the raven... nevermore. Ah, I've done it -- created the means to destroy matter!"

The stop-motion short film Vincent (1982), by Tim Burton, features a protagonist named Vincent Malloy, whose "favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe." As Vincent lies, seemingly dying, at the end of the film, he quotes the final couplet of "The Raven."

In the 1983 film The Dead Zone, Christopher Walken (as a school teacher Johnny Smith) quotes "The Raven" to his class during a lesson.

In the 1989 film Batman, Jack Nicholson (as The Joker) quotes "The Raven" to Kim Basinger's Vicky Vale when he says, "Take thy beak from out my heart."

Hannes Rall directed an animated, German-language version of The Raven (Der Rabe) in 1998.

A Spanish short film, with English dialogues, directed by Tinieblas González appeared in 1999.

The poem was translated to film by Trilobite Pictures and director Peter Bradley in 2003. The short film was released on DVD in 2005 by Lurker Films.

In the 1994 film The Crow, Eric, the tragic main character, references "The Raven" before blowing up Gideon's pawn shop: "Suddenly, I heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?"

In the 1994 film The Pagemaster, when Richard Tyler is visiting the land of horror and enters Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde's mansion, a raven swoops down next to them and screeches the word, 'nevermore'.

The film Nightmares from the Mind of Poe (2006) adapts "The Raven" along with three Poe short stories: "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Premature Burial".

The poem was referenced in the 2002 film "Finding Forrester", which starred Sean Connery. The film was discussed in the protagonist Jumal's English class.

In the 2005 film The Crow: Wicked Prayer the third sequel to The Crow, during the final battle between Jimmy and Luc, Jimmy tauntingly shouts "Quoth the raven nevermore, motherfucker!"

In the 2010 film The Expendables, numerous references are made to ravens and, obliquely, to "The Raven." The character played by Sylvester Stallone is in the process of getting a tattoo completed which features a raven, and the sea-plane which his team travels in also features an oversize picture of a raven.

COMING IN 2012:
John Cusack as Edgar Poe