The Raven was successful in 1935, something Roger Corman and Vincent Price didn't manage 28 years later. The 1963 version of The Raven had a script by Richard Matheson, who, as Wikipedia notes, said, "After hearing that they wanted to make a movie out of a poem, I felt it was a total joke, so comedy was the only way to do it." Matheson's error stemmed from taking the material too lightly; it’s because Raven '35 treats the story with serious gravity—director Lew Landers and screenwriter David Boehm are more extreme than Poe himself—that the film rises above typical horror and enters, unintentionally, the realm of parody. Consider this: early on, characters attend a dance performance called "The Spirit of Poe," where a dancer performs choreography while the poem itself plays in the background, and we see the author capturing his masterpiece on paper to one side of the stage. “The Spirit of Poe” would fit right into The Tall Guy, where Jeff Goldblum had the starring role in a satirical musical about The Elephant Man called "Elephant!" Among the audience is the morbid Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi), who isn't just obsessed with Edgar Allan, but also has a personal interest in ballerina Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware); Vollin reluctantly performed surgery on Jean after an accident, and only did so after her father, Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds), assured him that other doctors agreed he was the only one who could save her—and save her he did, developing feelings for her in the process. The Judge is grateful but not overly so, wanting to prevent Vollin from becoming his son-in-law. This leads Vollin to devise a plan against the Thatchers, with the unexpected help of the escaped murderer Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff). This Bateman is, as Grampa Simpson would say, dimwitted and unsightly. Bateman bursts into Vollin's office demanding that the doctor surgically alter his face so he can live anonymously. Perhaps aware that the doctor enjoys playing hard to get, Bateman threatens him with a gun. I’m reminded of Eminem's song "Stan," where the title character records a message for Slim just before driving into a river, belatedly wondering, "Shit, I forgot, how am I supposed to send this?" Similarly, Bateman’s plan to force the doctor to operate on him at gunpoint has one significant flaw: anesthesia. Sure enough, Vollin not only disarms Bateman but also paralyzes the right side of his face, promising to correct the distorted look if Bateman complies with the doctor's wishes (to say that Karloff's makeup is rough would be an understatement; it looks like his face was drawn on). Vollin invites Jean, her fiancé Jerry, and the Judge to a party at his mansion—filled with so many trapdoors, secret passages, and dungeons that it could have been designed by H.H. Holmes—introducing Bateman as his servant; while not exactly what he expected, Bateman’s altered features do make him unrecognizable (if only the doctor didn't insist on calling him by his real name). To put it briefly, Bateman subdues the Judge, whom Vollin ties to a replica of the pendulum from "The Pit and the Pendulum"; additionally, he locks Jean and Jerry in “the room where the walls meet.” For someone with an “extraordinary interest in Poe,” Vollin’s knowledge of the Boston author is too close to what Lovecraft called "secondhand erudition." The doctor knows The Raven by heart, but recites it like a student who has memorized something without understanding it; furthermore, his interpretation of the poem is literal: according to him, Poe fell in love with a certain Lenore and lost his mind when “someone took her from him” (if the Lenore of the poem had a real-life counterpart, it was likely Poe’s mother or his wife Virginia; the general understanding is that he had a more familial than romantic relationship with the latter). As for the pendulum, if Vollin had actually finished reading Poe's story, he would know the device isn’t worth the trouble (to be fair, it's safe to assume the doctor is not quite all there, and expecting logic from his actions would be asking too much).

Source on TMDB