Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Scott LeBrun 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.

LeonLouisRicci For Horror Completest only, this is not an awful attempt at making a low-budget Horror Movie about the making of a low-budget Horror Movie. But it is too confusing in Plot development and is an erratic and disjointed delivery of an incoherent Storyline.This does have a few ironic Scenes but the Movie within the Movie contains the best Violent and disturbing Horror Movie turns and since it is known that these are being filmed there is a total lack of scariness.There are elements of a good First-Draft Script here that seems abandon and rushed. The layers are thin and the in-comprehensiveness is just too much to make this an enjoyable Entertainment. Not enough incompetence to make it a Good Bad Movie and not enough Professionalism to make it anything more than a lifeless look inside the backside of B-Movie Making.

dsewizzrd-1 Ostensibly this is a Z-grade DTV horror film.But with lines like :"It's easy to die, I have, many times"and"Why are you reading that book ?" "Because it makes the plot more interesting"and"You made your way in here, now you can make your way out again !" (after he leads a man into the basement)(and take a listen to what they chant)it's not that clear what this film, made in the era known for post-structuralism, is actually about, or whether its just bad film-making. The acting is atrocious, but some actors I know, so are they hamming it up ?An old house, cut obviously with a contemporary dwelling, is the site of murders. A (bad) film is made in the grounds and the story replays again.

lost-in-limbo 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.