Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

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.

I have to say, I'm surprised The House of the Seven Corpses is considered such a rotten apple. I found much to my personal liking. I like how it has a foot in the modern (as of '73, that is) and the Gothic (the Old Dark House films; those "sinister houses with a dark history). I also liked the "film within a film" storyline. John Ireland is a force to be reckoned with. I wonder if his demanding, impatient, fiery low budget film director was based on someone (or a number of) he had worked with in the past. He is really one of the major reasons I thought House was so much fun to watch. But, man alive, does Ireland's Eric Hartman abuse his fading star, Gayle Dorian (Faith Domergue of This Island Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea). Sure, Gayle can be a bit of a diva, using her diminishing clout (once a star, now reduced to B-pictures) with expectations of star treatment that no longer exists. Hartman can be harsh to everyone on set. Especially his actors. He wants them ready and on set, make-up in place, the slate ready, and the camera in position. Time is important to him. He wants the film done as soon as possible. So Gayle's concerns, or anyone else's for that matter, mean little to him. It is all about his finished product, how he sees each scene, and that his cast come prepared and ready to perform with little wasted film, effort, or time. His rigorous approach to handling actors is certainly well established throughout the production of the cheap B-movie Eric wishes to see in the can without much delay. Gayle isn't really the kind of actress who fits in the mold of Eric's style of rushed direction. She would prefer that Eric made sure she looked good on camera and that her performance/character was superior to all else. I kind of look at her as a sort of Joan Crawford, but Eric is not William Castle…no sir, far from it. The setting of Eric's picture is an authentic house of horrors where members who lived there died under various ugly circumstances. The opening credits (I thought were a grabber) show each family member dying in disturbing fashion, inside the house. So the house itself has bad mojo. It is the perfect place to exploit for an old fashioned chiller in the Gothic vein. However, when a "Tibetan Book of the Dead" is found, the perfect prop to also exploit in his film (even read from by a member of the cast), it calls forth an undead member who once lived at the house of their shoot, rising from his grave (oh, and he won't be the only one…), and crashing the "set" after the film is about over (this is their very last night in the house), the cast and crew not anticipating a murderous zombie (why would they?). John Carradine pops up as a caretaker with plenty of knowledge in the history of the house, balking at Eric's handling of the subject matter as it pertains to their current location. John's Edgar Price even disrupts the shooting of a certain scene and is a bit of a nuisance to Eric (intrusive where he should stay out of the way, but Edgar simply doesn't like that Eric takes the house's history so lightly). I think perhaps the problem is that the horror doesn't come until late in the film, with a good breadth of the running time devoted to the machinations behind low budget filmmaking in regards to a tyrant director and the cast/crew who must endure this harsh, taxing, exhausting taskmaster. The house has that old atmospheric charm almost a necessity and requirement in films such as this. We spend a lot of time with members of the cast and crew behind and in front of the camera. That might be considered tedious and unexciting. I liked this all, though. The zombie might be considered similar to those you'd see in Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972), but director Harrison doesn't dwell on his features that much. You do get the hand bursting from its grave, with Carradine getting strangled in the process. The title of this film might seem to describe those who died in the house previous to the shoot, but this could also be seen as foreshadowing as well.

It must have been about 230 this morning. I had a pomegranite seed stuck that wouldn't come out. That generally keeps me up. So I did what I usually do in suchnot cases and turned on the odd show network. Pretty soon this 7-corpse thing began. It started out OK, I guess, with some credits cut around 6 or 7 people killing themselves or being killed. After this snappy part, there was a longer thingee when this old lady in an orange dress dragging on the wood floor and black cape stepped into a circle or candles and seemed about to stab herself to death after chanting some jibber jabber. But then the camera close-up became a far-out and there was a bunch of people in the room with the old lady, who was actually an actress in a really cheap horror flick. But 7 CORPSES itself is even more of a ripoff than the imaginary movie!! At least in the fake horror film being filmed, someone gets offed from time to time. In the so-called "real" 7 CORPSES show, no one ever dies! At least, not while I was awake.So, if you have something aggravational stuck in your teeth, and need help falling asleep, go ahead and see THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN CORPSES. It deserves 10 of 10 points for doing that trick. But if this was considered entertainment in 1974, it's just one more reason for me to be glad I wasn't there then.

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.