The House of Seven Corpses (1974)

Pretty Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Blistering performances.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

So says Eric Hartman (John Ireland), a horror film director making a movie about the "real life" occult-related murders that occurred in the mansion where he and his crew are now working. The old caretaker, a man named Edgar Price (John Carradine) warns them that they shouldn't be messing with things they don't understand. A cast & crew member named David (Jerry Strickler) decides to read from a "Tibetan Book of the Dead" because he finds it fascinating - but we all know that's always a huge no-no in any story like this. Hartman spends a lot of time dealing with difficult cast members - Gayle Dorian (ever lovely Faith Domergue, in one of her final film roles) and Christopher Millan (Charles Macaulay) - and other problems, and eventually the filmmakers begin to be murdered by a returnee from the grave.This is irresistible to a point, at least for any B movie lover who relishes the truly old fashioned "old dark house" type horror films; the location chosen here is fantastic, and director / co-writer Paul Harrison and company milk it for as much atmosphere as possible. They do give it a modern touch with a fair bit of gore. Certainly some viewers may grow impatient with all the set-up - it isn't until the final third that things really get rolling. Another review here mentioned this movie in the same breath as "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things", which is quite on-the-money. There was a long wait for the payoff in that movie as well. Still, this is fun and amusing and ultimately worth sticking with. The veteran cast makes a difference: Ireland, Domergue, and Carradine are all great. Irelands' character is a real s.o.b., to boot! Macaulay is a hoot as Christopher and Carole Wells is a looker as Anne the ingénue.Among those playing the victims in the nifty opening credits sequence are stuntman Charles Bail and future cinematographer Ronald Victor Garcia, who was the art director here. The cinematographer on "The House of Seven Corpses" is Don Jones, who was also a director of movies such as "Schoolgirls in Chains" and "The Forest". And B movie legend Gary Kent was the production manager and one of the associate producers. The choral music is composed by Robert Emenegger, and it's hilariously unsubtle stuff.All in all, a reasonably enjoyable outing with an interesting finish.Seven out of 10.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the living from the dead, like when hammy actors are stuck in a slowly oozing wreck of a horror flick. For almost all of this godawful mess, we're treated to the filming of a horror-movie-within-a-horror-movie at some dump of a mansion. I don't know which is worse, the outside movie or the inside movie.Finally, to end the insufferable boredom, a zombie or two - it's tough to keep track - wanders into the mansion at molasses speed and finishes everybody off. For good measure one of the zombies - I'm not sure which, and neither was the scriptwriter - hauls the blonde and freshly deceased ingénue off to the grave with him. They live coldly ever after. The other zombie apparently doesn't get any nookie for his efforts.A few particularly hammy bits, especially from the movie-with-a-movie's dictatorial director John Ireland, are so goofy that they save this hunk of junk from the dreaded one-rating. But it's a long slow wait between the sort of entertaining bits. Any decent zombie would tell you to avoid the waste of time.

***SPOILERS*** Making a low budget horror movie at the haunted Beal House director Eric Hartman,John Ireland,is having trouble with the script until one of his assistants David, Jerry Strickland, find a book in the Beal family library "The Tibetan book of the Dead". Inspired by the "Book of the Dead's" contents Hartman starts filming feeling it will give him the inspiration to make his somewhat B or third string like horror movie into an all time cinematic classic. What in fact the new script did was bring back the ghost from the past, the Beal family, to recreate the terrible situations that lead to the deaths that they suffered in the house to Hartman and his cast and crew!We already see what happened to the Beals at the very beginning of the movie and it wasn't pretty! It's as Hartman starts to direct his classic strange things begin to happen that's not exactly in the script. Like the star of the film former Hollywood glamor queen now washed up second rate actress Gayle Dorla's, Faith Domergue, pet cat Cleon disappearing.Cleon was later found in pieces on the lawn as Gayle was being filmed in a scene of hers in the movie. It's the creepy house caretaker Edger Price, a word play with the names Edger Allan Poe & Vincent Price, played by John Carradine who's on to what's really going on in the house. But in fear for his life Price keeps it secret. That in the fear that he may well end up becoming one of the house's future victims!****SPOILERS**** Watching the film you don't exactly know what's happening on the screen. Are the events real or make believe or acting on the film crews part. That's until the very end when it becomes very apparent that the past horrors of the real Beal House and family were being duplicated and are the real McCoy not just part of Hartman's movie. Careaker Price who did everything to prevent the carnage from happening became the house first victim! After that everything that we've seen at the beginning of the movie,the Bael family murders, happens to director Hartman and his crew of actors and stage hands. What rattled Hartman more then anything else, even the deaths of his cast and crew, was that he found the film of his masterpiece movie had been exposed and now completely worthless! With his life work now slated for the trash can all Hartman could do is wait for the inevitable to happen. That's with a heavy some 100 pound movie camera unit dropped from the balcony of the Bael House on his head by this Ghoul Man, Wills Boad, who was conjured up by the "Book of the Dead". And with that finally putting the by now emotionally and mentally destroyed Eric Hartman out of his misery!

A director and his crew head out to the isolated Beal mansion, to make a low-budget horror film about the seven mysterious deaths of the Beal family that have occurred there in the last century. Even with warnings by the caretaker, the director pays no attention to the supposedly cursed house. One of the crew find a book titled Tibetan Book of the Dead, and use some of the passages from it for their script. But in doing so, when red they raise a ghoul from its grave.Boring, confusing and tacky all rolled up into one, equals this penniless midnight horror production. What feels like an eternity, it just never seems to get going or demonstrate anything effective from somewhat decent ideas. Even though director Paul Harrison's clunky, tensionless direction did construct a couple eerie, moody and atmospheric set-pieces. But laziness did set it early. The whole film within a film structure takes up most of the movie and in this time little to nothing happens of great interest. Nor is it fun. Think of Bob Clark's "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)", and now we've got older actors in the part. However I found "Seven Corpses" to be inferior. The script early on has some cutting wit abound, before it ends up being drab, predictable and left with many unfulfilled possibilities. The cheap foundation involving limited sets didn't help matters either, but the mansion's dreary, dark appearance had a creepy air to it. Performances from a recognizable b-cast is mainly rigid. John Carradine in small part mainly lurks about. John Ireland plays a hot-headed director, Faith Domergue's washed-up actress demands attention and Charles Macaulay hams it up. The slow grinding premise is crossed between "Ten Little Indians" and your usual zombie set-up. However its not all that engaging, even with its occult and supernatural edge. Hell they even throw in some graveyard action, with no prevail. When the rotting ghoul makes its appearance… finally, but a bit late. It does get a little better, if very baffling. Just like the inspired opening, the ending is deliciously downbeat. To bad in between, it constantly drags. Continuity in many scenes comes across non-existent, and the death scenes are more exciting and bloodier (but indeed poorly executed) in the movie they're making, then what actually happens to them when the zombie appears. The generic music score flounders on with its shuddery, but frank Gothic cues, and the camera-work is blandly staged with a lack of imagination. Shoot and frame. Shoot and frame. Job done. That's a wrap.