SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

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.

Casey Abell Sometimes it's hard to tell the living from the dead, like when hammy actors are stuck in a slowly oozing wreck of a horror flick. For almost all of this godawful mess, we're treated to the filming of a horror-movie-within-a-horror-movie at some dump of a mansion. I don't know which is worse, the outside movie or the inside movie.Finally, to end the insufferable boredom, a zombie or two - it's tough to keep track - wanders into the mansion at molasses speed and finishes everybody off. For good measure one of the zombies - I'm not sure which, and neither was the scriptwriter - hauls the blonde and freshly deceased ingénue off to the grave with him. They live coldly ever after. The other zombie apparently doesn't get any nookie for his efforts.A few particularly hammy bits, especially from the movie-with-a-movie's dictatorial director John Ireland, are so goofy that they save this hunk of junk from the dreaded one-rating. But it's a long slow wait between the sort of entertaining bits. Any decent zombie would tell you to avoid the waste of time.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Making a low budget horror movie at the haunted Beal House director Eric Hartman,John Ireland,is having trouble with the script until one of his assistants David, Jerry Strickland, find a book in the Beal family library "The Tibetan book of the Dead". Inspired by the "Book of the Dead's" contents Hartman starts filming feeling it will give him the inspiration to make his somewhat B or third string like horror movie into an all time cinematic classic. What in fact the new script did was bring back the ghost from the past, the Beal family, to recreate the terrible situations that lead to the deaths that they suffered in the house to Hartman and his cast and crew!We already see what happened to the Beals at the very beginning of the movie and it wasn't pretty! It's as Hartman starts to direct his classic strange things begin to happen that's not exactly in the script. Like the star of the film former Hollywood glamor queen now washed up second rate actress Gayle Dorla's, Faith Domergue, pet cat Cleon disappearing.Cleon was later found in pieces on the lawn as Gayle was being filmed in a scene of hers in the movie. It's the creepy house caretaker Edger Price, a word play with the names Edger Allan Poe & Vincent Price, played by John Carradine who's on to what's really going on in the house. But in fear for his life Price keeps it secret. That in the fear that he may well end up becoming one of the house's future victims!****SPOILERS**** Watching the film you don't exactly know what's happening on the screen. Are the events real or make believe or acting on the film crews part. That's until the very end when it becomes very apparent that the past horrors of the real Beal House and family were being duplicated and are the real McCoy not just part of Hartman's movie. Careaker Price who did everything to prevent the carnage from happening became the house first victim! After that everything that we've seen at the beginning of the movie,the Bael family murders, happens to director Hartman and his crew of actors and stage hands. What rattled Hartman more then anything else, even the deaths of his cast and crew, was that he found the film of his masterpiece movie had been exposed and now completely worthless! With his life work now slated for the trash can all Hartman could do is wait for the inevitable to happen. That's with a heavy some 100 pound movie camera unit dropped from the balcony of the Bael House on his head by this Ghoul Man, Wills Boad, who was conjured up by the "Book of the Dead". And with that finally putting the by now emotionally and mentally destroyed Eric Hartman out of his misery!

daveydalek I am honestly confused by most of these reviews and comments. There is nothing really THAT BAD about this film. It plays like an extended version of an episode of "Night Gallery." There is obvious comparisons to "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" and other genre films but this film really doesn't belong in those categories. I am a fan of the 70's horror genre and did not expect much when I sat down to re-watch this film after twenty years. (DID NOT EXPECT MUCH-GOT THAT!) I would not call it boring or confusing. Too many people enjoy writing overly critical reviews of movies that were never intended to be masterpieces. Too many reviewers also feel the need to compare all movies to each other rather than seeing them for what they are really worth individually. In all of it's "stiffness" this film is still more entertaining than the CGI crap Hollywood dumps on the public in 2008!