The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)

***½
USA



At the peak of his powers of enunciation and sinister knuckle formation, Bela Lugosi plays a Poe fanatic with a secret chamber's worth of Poe-inspired torture devices. He controls Boris Karloff by paralysing half his face with hilarious google-eye make-up. This is by no means one of the essential Universal horrors, but it's wonderfully cheesy and wonderfully eerie.