( Silent, Black & White and with Shock Color Inserts) that could be combined to form a Trilogy Feature Film.
I wrote a treatment for a 5 minute adaptation of THE RAVEN, again taking place entirely within the mind of the protagonist ( so that we didn't have to find a Real raven! ) and we enlisted our co-workers from CASA MANANA, Michael Barrett and Daphne Wyche to portray POE and LENORE.
We shot the whole thing in Mark's Father's Office, which had been the office of Inspector White in DRACULA MADE ME DO IT! our first film effort in 1971, with the addition of a false "window" set piece through which the title bird made it's appearance and through which our unfortunate protagonist made his final exit at the end of the film.
For a central scene in the film we all drove to Dallas to shoot in Mark's cousin's house which featured a dramatic circular staircase.
The final shot in color was filmed by our friend RALPH ARCHENHOLD who possessed a very fine camera with a Slow-Motion feature. I did the "stunt" work of flying headfirst through the fake window, and there were several cuts of Michael Barrett "falling" with glistening shards of glass suspended all around him...one of which ends up severing his jugular vein as he lands for a nice juicy horror close-up and fade out!
I describe all of this in detail because...this is the only one of our fims which NO LONGER EXISTS! The one and only print has gone missing and is probably lost forever.
In all fairness, although we spent triple the effort on this short film than we had on THE TELL-TALE HEART, it was not one of our better efforts and neither Mark nor I were particularly happy with it as it turned out. We made some preliminary plans to film THE BLACK CAT with other co-workers of ours from the theatre, but they never came to fruition and the whole project fell apart as we graduated from High School and went our separate ways into college.
Fast forward 35 years....to the images you see above.......
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