TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

rllpnt I visited the house of seven Gables in 1996 & I fell in love with the house from that day on. I dreamed of living in a house like that full of love in it & with the man I love. It is the most beautiful house I ever saw. I will always love the house for all eternity. I believe the house loves me too. I am a woman who loves the victorian age. I am now going to be 52 years old & on my second life with a chef. I hope to visit the house before the end of my life. It feels as if the house is calling me to it. Maybe in the summer we will go there to see the house again & then I will whisper to the house that I came back to tell it I love it & I belong there I believe.

Neil Doyle Despite the fact that this is a compressed and revised version of the Hawthorne novel, THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES manages to overcome its budget limitations (on a B-film scale) to become an interesting, if over-plotted version of the original story.Margaret Lindsay, who usually had second femme leads at Warner Brothers during the '30s, is the central character here and acquits herself admirably. She's so good as the repressed Cousin Hepzibah, a bitter woman who becomes a reclusive owner of the house, that's it's a wonder she didn't have a bigger career. Others in the cast, including George Sanders, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, Dick Foran and Cecil Kellaway, perform admirably too. In fact, the acting is on the strong side and better than the script deserves.But for all its strengths, the story is too complex to be told in 90 minutes and much had to be handled too swiftly to give any of the characters real depth. It's a nice try, and the film itself is worth seeing as a product of its time.

Red7Eric Being a big fan of the book, I was avoiding this film for a LONG time. The first half hour of the film would lead a fan of Hawthorne to conclude that the screenwriter had never even READ the original novel.However, the screenwriter in this instance simply wanted to spend the first 30 minutes dramatizing the 'back story' that Hawthorne only alludes to in the book. Jaffrey and Clifford are now brothers, not cousins. Clifford and Hepzibah are now lovers, not siblings ... and the details surrounding the murder of Clifford's father (his uncle in the book) are slightly different, but the movie is only 90 minutes long, and the film simplifies the plotline without erasing the POINT.Some of the acting (Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah, for example) is so brilliant, it makes you want to cry. The scenes that depict Phoebe's arrival to Seven Gables (Chapter 2 in the book, almost halfway through the film) are incredibly well acted. Other moments in the film are so badly and broadly acted, it's laughable. At the scene of the first murder, the camera actually does a quick pan to Margaret Lindsay in the doorway, biting her knuckle. Oy gevalt.As is usual, reading the book is more of a challenge (not everyone enjoys Hawthorne's prose), but ultimately a MUCH richer experience. For a product of its time, however ... the film does itself justice.

rayd-2 The screen writer took great liberties with the original work by Hawthorne. Relationships are changed to allow a love interest. Hepzibah Pyncheon becomes the cousin of Clifford Pyncheon, rather than his sister, to allow the romance to weave itself throughout the film. Also the character of Clifford is altered to make him heroic, something he is not in the book. Added are a trial, which was never in the book. Great emphasis is place on the dedication of Matthew Maule to the cause of abolition. Hawthorne never stressed this. The greatest shortcoming is the lack of emphasis on the house itself. It plays a major role in the novel but in the film it is just another building in which the action takes place. Overall it is not a bad film but if one is trying to capture the essence of what Hawthorne was writing, the film misses the major points.