Don't listen to the negative reviews

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Right genres, wrong melting pot. This giallo-ish, hammer horror-y hybrid starts out like it might be worth watching, but before long in come endless drawn out sequences of scared characters wailing about in poorly lit corridors and basements with an overbearing soundtrack that gets more annoying by the minute playing over everything too loudly. Soon I couldn't figure out what was going on any more, and didn't care any more either. There are a couple of decent bits including a nicely eerie dream sequence, but it's not enough to save it from also-ran 70's cut price b-movie mediocrity.The following year Anton Diffring would also star in the vaguely similar but vastly more entertaining werewolf/blaxploitation campfest The Beast Must Die.

Seven Deaths... is less a giallo and more of an Old Dark House chiller of the British sort, though an Italian film. The basic premise has a surprisingly old schoolgirl returning to "the castle" to see her mother and other strange family members. There's a fortune to be had here, if only the right people would stop being alive. So, one by one, characters are picked off, usually with a straight razor to the neck. Unfortunately, the death scenes use that nauseating technicolor red paint for blood instead of something more realistic. That really kills the mood. You have several red herrings here as usual and the end comes out of left field, as is the usual tactic in gialli. Among the killers you may suspect, there is James, the cousin of Coringa the schoolgirl. He's an annoying Emo of the Lord Byron set who you immediately want to be the next to fall under the blade as soon as you meet him. Then there's the caretakers who may or may not know more about the castle and its history than they let on. James's mother, who is a real piece of work, and her sexual powerhouse of an older doctor gentleman who also has a go with the French tutor. Oh, did I forget to mention the animal star of our film? Yes, I forgot about the other James......The Gorilla! Why is there a gorilla in this film, you might ask? Well, no one is really sure as he serves no obvious purpose other than unintentional comedy relief since he's just a guy in a bad ape suit. Actually, I as referring to our fat cat friend, Garfield, who seems to always pop up at the right time for the killer to strike. There's also some mumbo jumbo about a local legend and vampires, but there's no vampires anywhere to be found here. Though you will see a few bats(and not just the old bats that wear fine dresses). The directing is above average, with many peeping tom/voyeur shots from around corners and behind tombstones, which is always enjoyable. The music is your typical old dark British chiller, with plenty of musical stabs sounding off right when ladies put their hands to their brows and faint. The film is dubbed, badly in many places, and sometimes the dubbing is totally absent and you get subtitles. Not sure what's going on there. Set in what is supposed to be a Scottish castle, you don't get to many exterior shots of the place, but the interior is very sumptuous with all the typical Gothic trappings you'd expect to find in a film of this sort. The kill scenes are rather ho-hum, so don't expect much there. But, if you like secret passages and whodunits, then you'll probably feel at home.

This Gothic horror/Giallo hybrid doesn't seem to be all that well-regarded but, having read a couple of reviews before actually viewing it (I had by-passed the Blue Underground DVD because of the absence of the Italian-language track but managed to acquire the film regardless through other sources), I became quite intrigued by some of the bizarre elements incorporated into the script. To get back to the language factor for a bit: actually, the print on display was mostly in English (which, to be fair, is fitting – given the Scottish setting of the tale) but it reverted to Italian for four brief scenes which, presumably, were omitted from export versions.Having watched the film for myself, I must say that I liked it quite a bit: Margheriti was perhaps the most erratic of the triumvirate of directors who gave the genre an identity in Italy (the others being, of course, Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava) – however, this turned out to be a pretty solid effort all round. For one thing, it's an absolute treat for the eyes – the Gothic atmosphere is really laid on thick here (when it comes to both interiors and exteriors), and the whole is accompanied by a moodily effective score from the ever-reliable Riz Ortolani. Peter Bryan wrote the novel on which the film was based: having himself contributed to a number of scripts for Hammer horror titles, it doesn't take much to visualize this as one of their own products – since that famed genre brand-name alternated between Gothic-styled fare and modern thrillers (usually with a similar attempt to prevent the heroine from laying her hands on a family inheritance at its center) – albeit with a more adult approach typical of the country and the era.Margheriti managed to assemble a splendid international cast: British Jane Birkin as the lovely heroine Corringa (also the name of the source novel), American Hiram Keller (as the current and predictably mad lord), Germans Anton Diffring and Doris Kunstmann (as, respectively, the shady doctor and luscious teacher ostensibly employed for Keller's rehabilitation), French Serge Gainsbourg (Birkin's former husband and frequent collaborator, as the somewhat eccentric police inspector looking into the titular murders) and Italians Venantino Venantini (as the new parish priest) and Luciano Pigozzi (as the custodian of the castle grounds). Some of the more unusual plot points involve: Diffring being romantically involved with both Keller's mother and the French teacher (though the film's erotic quotient is disappointingly mild); Kunstmann is actually a bisexual and, at one point, attempts to seduce Birkin – unsurprisingly, this proved to be one of the 'deleted' scenes (though the fling is over before it has even begun!); Birkin and Keller, then, start off on the wrong foot but end up bonding – and, eventually, lovers (despite being first cousins)! Gore is present via images of corpses being devoured by rats and a succession of throat-slashings, while the identity of the killer turns out to be quite a revelation. The narrative does, however, feature a couple of red herrings in the rather unconvincing element of vampirism (via a family legend which 'afflicts' Birkin's deceased mother – though, for good measure, the heroine herself runs into a clutch of bats while inspecting the castle dungeons) and the even more baffling presence of an ape in the house, with which very little is actually done after all! On the other hand, the titular furry feline is very cute and agreeably enigmatic – contriving somehow to be present at the scene of each and every murder, hence SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE.

Quite standard Spaghetti slasher is nowhere near excellent, but also too far from awful to merit serious critical assault. The usual Gothic castle goings-on are given no special treatment here, and the psycho-killer's carnage is strictly PG on the shocks and gore board. This film is, moreover, surprisingly atmospheric. The mossy, rustic exterior of the castle, as well as its rich baroque antique decorum, make for a great looking European horror setting. Too bad, though, that the film never really gains much momentum...I found myself looking around the room after the first 30 minutes. Fortunately, the fairly intense closing scenes make up heartily for these shortcomings.SEVEN DEATHS is a watchable enough seventy-odd minutes, but if you're an unwaning viewer of connate movies, then chances are you've seen all this done before, and probably more successfully.*** Were they feeding that cat bacon-wrapped tater-tots or something? That thing was a freakin' tank!5/10