The House of Seven Corpses (1974)

Studio: Severin

Theatrical Release: February 1974

Blu-Ray/DVD Release: August 2013

Rating: PG

Directed by Paul Harrison

Review by Craig Sorensen

 

Old-fashioned even upon it’s original release (the same year as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas), The House of Seven Corpses is the kind American gothic hokum that was a staple of late night TV for years.  Fading American stars mingle with semi-celebrity weirdos and unknowns in a strange plot that doesn’t really make much sense.  It doesn’t matter though when it’s this entertaining (also, when it’s two in the morning and you’re drunk).

 Right away, the film is pulling the rug out from under you with what looks like Faith Domergue (It Came From Beneath The Sea( performing an occult ritual (which involves stomping on a pentagram and screaming DIE!) turning out to be the first shot in the production of a B horror film.  The cast and crew, led by director Eric Hartman (John Ireland of The Incubus) have chosen the old Beal house to shoot their little film.  The house, of course, is notorious for the various ways in which members of the Beal family have kicked the bucket.  Caretaker Edgar (John Carradine of Munster, Go Home!) is happy to tell us all about it while taking the crew on a tour of the house (why no on has seen the house before they started shooting, I have no fucking idea).  Of course, Edgar’s warnings go unheeded and we all know how that’s gonna turn out...

 

 The House of Seven Corpses is the kind of film that I grew up on so it’s difficult for me to remain impartial.  I’ll be frank, it’s not a great film.  The pacing is all over the place.  It seems to take forever for the film to get going.  It’s cheap.  But I still love it.  It’s the kind of film that I can see myself returning to a few times a year (late at night and I’ll probably fall asleep).  It’s the kind of film that you see as a kid on TV and you vaguely remember bits and pieces but can’t place whether you actually saw them or it’s part of some fever dream.  Did I really see a film in which John Carradine carves his own gravestone and Charles Macaulay wears a terrible toupee?

 

 The film looks better than it ever did on TV on Severin’s Blu-Ray.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a cheap production and it looks it, but for what it is, it looks good.  Color is very good here, which is a nice change of pace from the muddy transfers this film has been saddled with in the past.  It’s nice to be able to finally see something like this in the way it would have looked in a theatrical setting rather than a fuzzy television transfer on a crummy old TV.

 As far as extras go, you get the obvious trailer, a new audio commentary with Associate Producer Gary Kent and Lars Nilsen (of Alamo Drafthouse) and a vintage interview with Carradine.  The commentary is one of the more entertaining one’s that I’ve heard in a while.  Kent is pretty candid and there are plenty of funny stories from the shoot.  The Carradine interview runs about 30 minutes and again, Carradine is pretty candid about his career and the films he’s known for.

[Rating: 3.5 Stars]