'Raven' star John Cusack tests his actio...

'Raven' star John Cusack tests his actio...

In 'The Raven,' John Cusack portrays Edgar Allan Poe, who's helping police find a serial murderer.

Even after nearly 30 years in show business, John Cusack still has his moments where the adrenaline kicks in and he remembers just why he loves his job so much.

One of them came during filming of The Raven, opening Friday, where Cusack found himself charging through a Eastern European graveyard (doubling for 1849 Baltimore) on horseback, firing a gun at a stuntman playing a fleeing serial killer.

Im on a horse in Serbia playing Edgar Allan Poe in the fog, ri ding through the underworld, the 45-year-old actor tells the Daily News. This is pretty cool.

Cool is something that John Cusack has in spades, says the movies director, James McTeigue.

John can ride a horse, so thats great, says Raven director, James McTeigue. The amount of time Ive stood on sets with actors and theyve said, I can ride a horse, and you get them there and its like, no, you cant ride a horse. John can. With the action, you always buy into the action more if you see its the actor in the frame.

Theres nothing worse seeing someone whos out of sync in an action sequence. That just looks terrible. That pops you out of the movie.

Not that The Raven can be pigeonholed as just a popcorn action movie.

Co-starring Luke Evans and Alice Eve, its a fictional cat-and-mouse thriller set during the last five days of the authors life, before Poe was found near death on a park bench in Baltimore.

Poes stories serve as inspiration for a serial killers imaginative murder spree.

Youll have to watch the Pit and Pendulum scene through your fingers.

The whole conceit of the movie is Poe sort of gets wrapped up in one of his own stories, which kind of speaks to all the different mashups and genres he was playing with and creating, says Cusack. One of the themes that was so great about him is he writes about the thin line, that twilight between insanity, reality and fantasy and also between waking and dreaming and life and death. He had such a romance with the abyss.

The film is also a rare chance for Cusack to flex his action muscles. Its strange that he hasnt done more in the genre considering he boasts martial arts chops.

Audiences still associate Cusack with the iconic image of him holding up a boom box pumping Peter Gabriels In Your Eyes in the 1989 romantic comedy Say Anything. But in real life, hes an expert martial artist with a sixth-degree black belt in Ukidokan kic k boxing.

Cusack fans may remember his teacher, Benny (The Jet) Urquidez, as the hit man who gets stabbed to death with a pen to the neck in 1997s Grosse Pointe Blank. The champion of full-contact karate (a precursor to MMA) turned fight coordinator, however, has known and trained with his actor buddy behind the scenes for 21 years.