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.
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.