Karloff & Lugosi in The Raven (1935)
Supposedly, big-star Karloff hated working on this low-budget penny dreadful production-- when one of the underling co-stars came on set first day & asked Karloff where the bathroom was, he told him "this whole set is a toilet!" But absurd & illogical as it may be, it's Shakespeare compared to modern re-approximations of its archtypical boobytrapped house of horrors schtick. This movie was a revelation to me as plainly the inspiration for numerous Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, & Mel Brooks routines.
SPOILERS
Lugosi is the retired, genius Doctor--let's call him, Dracula--who the Judge turns to when his dancer daughter is left in a coma after a car wreck and none of the other Docs--including her fiancee--can save her. The Judge has to make a personal call on Dracula to plea for him to come out of retirement & take the case, and appeals to Drac's ego by telling him how he is the only one who can do the job. Drac does save the girl, but falls in love with her too, especially when she thanks him by performing a ballet based on Poe's The Raven, which Dracula is fascinated by Poe and even has a secret collection of Poe-inspired torture devices in his hidden basement behind the revolving-library-panel.
The Judge tells Drac to cool out on his girl & Drac flips a lid about it. He takes in a fugitive killer (Karloff) who wants plastic surgery to make a getaway, but tricks him by instead making him very Frankenstein hideous. Drac then tells Frank he'll make him pretty again if he helps him exact revenge against those who have thwarted his amorous desires. Hilarity ensues as Dracula lures the Judge, his daughter & fiancee, & assorted supporting cast to his mansion for a weekend of fun involving lightning, crashing trees, secret trapdoors, drugs, and of course, Poe-inspired tortures. Dracula meets his in end in a scene later stolen by George Lucas for the Death Star trash compactor, but not before mortally wounding Frankenstein, who saved the day because of his own love at first sight for the Judge's daughter.
A fine smorgasboard of lurid classic camp. I would have called it Dracula vs. Frankenstein in Poe's House of Horrors, though.