Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Gary 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.

Mr_Ectoplasma "The House of Seven Corpses" follows a film crew making a movie at a haunted mansion where seven mysterious deaths occurred under varying circumstances over the course of its history. Through the re-enactment of rituals in the film, the crew brings about evil forces that threaten the lives of everyone involved.Before you let the mass of IMDb reviews lambasting this film put you off from giving it a spin, I have to say that, at least as far as mid-'70s supernatural horror flicks go, "The House of Seven Corpses" is not nearly the disasterpiece that it's been painted as. The opening credits play over filmed re- enactments of the seven deaths that occurred in the titular house, ranging from grim suicides to murders, each pausing on a still frame of the dying subject—it's an unsettling opening, and perhaps one of the unexpectedly eeriest credit sequences I've seen.The film benefits from the fact that it's a movie about the making of a movie, which affords it some inventive ground in which it can present scenes to its audience without the audience knowing full-well what is "real" and what is part of the production. It's an easy trick, but an effective and at times mind-bending one. For being a low-budget picture, it does have some nice cinematography, and the mansion locale is remarkably dreary and unsettling. There is a noticeable lull in the middle of the film, but the finale ramps up the action a bit, and it ends on an appropriately bizarre note.A wacky and routinely idiosyncratic performance from John Carradine lends the film a little bit of extra weirdness, while John Ireland plays the overbearing director, and Hollywood's golden age horror starlet Faith Domergue effectively plays an aging actress.Overall, I found "The House of Seven Corpses" to be a competent haunted house horror film. It is very much of a certain stock, and it's not groundbreaking nor perfectly crafted—but in terms of mood, it's effectively weird and atmospheric, which makes up for the nosedive it takes about midway through before breathing some life into itself before its untimely death. 6/10.

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...

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!

Scarecrow-88 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.