Sam Panico Directors are notoriously horrible to the actors in their films. Witness the way Friedkin treated the cast of The Exorcist or how Hitchcock told Tippi Hedren that mechanical birds would be used in a scene in The Birds, only for real ones to be used in an incident that she described as "brutal and ugly and relentless."The House of Seven Corpses is all about Eric Hartman (John Ireland, I Saw What You Did), a director who is making a film in an actual haunted house. A zombie is awakened because the actors find The Book of the Dead and use the words in it for authenticity.Disclaimer: The Tibetian Book of the Dead isn't a book of evil spells but actually describes the period of time between death and rebirth.Soon, people start dying left and right, starting with caretaker Edgar Price (John Carradine!) and leading to a grave featuring David, the director's assistant's name. One by one, the cast succumbs to the zombie, who finally takes his girlfriend back to his grave.Director Paul Harrison was a writer on the TV show H.R. Pufnstuf. One wonders how much that experience colors this film. The director is completely out of his mind, screaming and yelling and damaging anyone that comes near to him. Perhaps he's the real monster.This is an enjoyable trifle, but nothing to lose your brains over.

Leofwine_draca If you're looking for an old-fashioned horror film set in a spooky-looking mansion, then you might want to have a look at THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES, an interesting one-of-a-kind film with a nice spooky atmosphere to sustain interest despite the fact that little actually happens during the film. All of the action and murder takes place in the opening and closing scenes, with the middle parts giving us time to get to know the characters before they get gruesomely dispatched.The main problem with this film is the muddled conclusion. One character turns out to be a reincarnation of the original murderer and promptly jumps back into the grave to turn into a mouldering zombie! What?!?! Excuse me but I didn't really have a clue as to what was going on with the two zombies at the end of the film. Things are also a bit dark but these help to work some atmosphere into some nicely spooky shots of zombies stumbling through the woods and up ancient staircases, quietly shuddery scenes which will send chills down your spine.Some gore wouldn't have gone amiss but sadly the only blood in the film is of the fake variety. Thankfully a good cast help to make up for these failures. Firstly there's a great turn from John Ireland as the hard, ruthless director of the film who doesn't bat an eyelid when he finds the cameraman murdered, only to have a fit when he finds his beloved film destroyed! A spooky John Carradine lurks around as a wizened caretaker, this was in the days when Carradine was still able to act. I loved the bickering and squabbling between the two ageing movie stars, which comes across as very believable.There's a nice spooky score to get your pulse going too. I enjoyed this slow-moving yet gripping film, which stays interesting due to the use of the film-within-a-film, a plot device I never tire of. It's really interesting to watch how the director manages his crew and stars, and you can't help but wonder how close to the truth the portrayal really is. Come to think of it, without the horror aspects this might have worked better...

bkoganbing John Carradine, John Ireland, and Faith Domergue who as players all saw better days in better films got together for this Grade G horror film about life imitating art in a mysterious mansion.For Carradine it was in those last two decades of his career that he appeared in anything on the theory it was better to keep working no matter what you did and get those paychecks coming in. With that magnificent sonorous voice of his, Carradine was always in great demand for horror pictures and the man did not discriminate in the least in what he appeared in.He plays the caretaker of an old Gothic mansion who movie director John Ireland has rented for his latest low budget slasher film. It's even got a graveyard, but with a missing occupant. Faith Domergue is Ireland's aging star and Carole Wells is the young ingenue.In the last twenty minutes or so most of the cast winds up dead that aren't dead already. The script is so incoherent I'm still trying to figure out the point. I won't waste any more gray matter on it.

Coventry This is the type of movie where it actually hurts to acknowledge that it really, really sucks. I normally sanctify stuff like this! Early 70's grindhouse flicks with scrumptious sounding titles and a schlocky low-budget atmosphere usually ROCK. "House of Seven Corpses" appeared to dispose of even more trumps, since the cast is a gathering of great genre veterans (including John Carradine, John Ireland and Faith Domergue) and the filming locations (the titular house, the graveyard) are obviously very expedient for a gloomy tale of terror. The film opens with its absolute greatest and most hauntingly memorable sequences, though sadly enough they're the only ones that qualify as such. The credits are a splendid montage, complete with freakish color-effects and eerie freeze-frames, illustrating how the titular house received its notorious reputation. The last seven owners were mysteriously murdered here and the credits montage gleefully exhibits their final moments. Someone falls down the balcony screaming, a lady drowns in her bathtub, and another female body hangs dangling from the ceiling and four more macabre tableaux. Needless to say the house is cursed and the awkward behavior of t caretaker Mr. Price (Carradine) only fortify this reputation. In other words, the house forms the ideal turf for the acclaimed director Eric Hartman (John Ireland) to shoot his satanic horror film project. The film-within-film structure is what mainly causes "House of Seven Corpses" to be so boring and uneventful. A lot of movie-material is wasted on crew members putting films spools in the camera and dragging around cables or – even worse – Faith Domergue and Charles Macaulay portraying horridly intolerable actor stereotypes. The plot finally gets a little interesting (only a little, mind you) when one of the characters reads some lines from an occult book and accidentally awakes a rotting corpse in the backyard. The asthmatic (judging by the noises he produces) zombie slowly heads for the house and kills the entire movie crew, reminiscent of how the previous seven turned into corpses. After a running time of approximately 60 minutes, the film suddenly turns from humdrum into just plain weird and confusing. I'm still unsure whether the final twist has to do with the concept of reincarnation or just coincidence and all the remaining characters suddenly seem to go undergo vast mental transformations shortly before they die, for some reason. I honestly regret confirming "House of Seven Corpses" is a pretty dreadful movie. The locations and scenery are gloomy chilling, but not nearly used to full effect and there's a serious lack of gruesome bloodshed. Numerous low-budgeted 70's gems were stunningly gross, so the lack of financial means is no excuse and the film-within-film murders really don't count. Even the always-reliable veteran stars deliver hammy performances and Harrison's direction is completely uninspired. Not recommended, unless you think the zero cool four-and-a-half minute playing opening credits montage is worth the effort of purchasing a copy.