A movie crew shoots its latest satanic flick at a house which had experienced seven actual murders. John Carradine plays the grim grounds keeper who warns of the impending dangers. This felt very much in the spirit of the superior CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, I thought. And like that film we have to sit through a lot of exposition until we get to the ghoulish mayhem at the very end. There isn't much to recommend for most of the first three quarters, unless you like watching people shoot movies. But I always get a kick out of seeing Carradine wandering about in any horror film. Also starring in this movie is an older Faith Domergue (50's sci-fi beauty) which is interesting. And it's funny watching John Ireland playing the part of the most insufferably arrogant director any underpaid actor would ever want to work for. ** out of ****

I don't think I expected a lot from "The House of Seven Corpses"---after all, it IS named "The House of Seven Corpses"! However, given the initially very interesting premise, I do feel I was very disappointed in the movie. They sure could have done a lot better--as it was riddled with very bad clichés--too many to make it enjoyable.

The film is set in a horrible old house where John Carradine plays the caretaker. The place is horrible because over the years, seven people were murdered or committed suicide there--and it's obviously cursed. However, inexplicably, a film team comes there to film a horror film--so the movie is, at times, a movie within a movie. Things go well with filming until, foolishly, they use a book of demonic spells (not a good idea) into the script. Soon after, a nasty zombie crawls out of the nearby cemetery and does nasty stuff. This SHOULD have been great--after all, the zombie looked wonderfully nasty. But, instead it was VERY slow and, as I mentioned above, full of clichés--such as the woman who keeps falling down as the zombie nears her, a lady who faints and the like. No one thought to just leave the (literally) damned place! If you are really undemanding and don't mind laughing along with the film, "The House of Seven Corpses" isn't bad--otherwise, I say skip it--the early to mid-1970s simply produced a lot of horror films that were better. A waste of Carradine, John Ireland and Faith Domergue.

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.