The House of Seven Corpses

1974
4.2| 1h30m| en
Details

A director is filming on location in a house where seven murders were committed. The caretaker warns them not to mess with things they do not understand (the murders were occult related), but the director wants to be as authentic as possible and has his cast re-enact rituals that took place in the house thus summoning a ghoul from the nearby cemetery to bump the whole film crew off one by one.

Director

Producted By

Television Corporation of America

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Steineded How sad is this?
Pluskylang Great Film overall
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.
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.
Joseph Brando Eric Hartman (John Ireland) is filming a movie with a small cast and crew inside The House Of Seven Corpses. No one lives there anymore (they're all dead) except the old caretaker (John Carradine) and he has problems with the way the film is being shot causing him to do what Carradine did best at this stage in his career - be a cantankerous old drunk! The house provides plenty of atmosphere and the film-within-a-film keeps things interesting. There's cool creepy music and a likable enough cast, including veteran Faith Domergue, pushing this one up a little higher than some of it's drive-in-fodder peer. But still, with its slow-moving 70's story, this one is purely for those who dig stuff like "Don't Look In The Basement" or "Grave Of The Vampire" and do not need rationale in their horror films to enjoy them. Seventies haunted house fans - eat your heart out!
GL84 Attempting to shoot a horror movie on a cursed location where the real life murders they're emulating occurred, a film crew accidentally conjures a deformed being that slowly begins killing them off one-by-one.A slightly disappointing but overall quite creepy effort, this one really could've been great with the fixing of a few minor details. The main issue at hand here is the remarkably slow-paced offering, as there's just hardly anything going on but the movie shoot for the entire running time in the first hour, leaving this to rely on it's other efforts to work but basically doesn't even get started with it's killing until the hour mark or even making any mention of the killer until then and it causes the film to go along quite slowly. This is the most disturbing feature since the rest of the film is quite nice, with a large Victorian house serving as the basis for both the film and the movie being shot there giving off an incredible atmosphere, the slow-building set-up making for a chilly time and the rampage by the decomposing corpse being quite bloody and enjoyable, but overall it's just really hurt by it's slow set-up.Rated R: Violence and Language.