In The House of Seven Corpses, director Eric Hartman (played by John Ireland) is shooting a horror movie in an old mansion where many people have been killed or committed suicide. His washed up leading lady (Faith Domergue) would rather be just about anywhere else. Her co-star Christopher (Charles Macaulay), who looks like a poor man's Robert Goulet, likes his whiskey flask as much as he likes quoting Shakespeare. House caretaker Edgar Price (John Carradine) doesn't care much for any of them.
This should be the part where I write about how mysterious things start happening during the filming of the movie. But aside from a cat being chopped in half and left in the yard, nothing scary really happens for a good hour. In fact, I found myself wanting to see the fictional movie they were filming more than the actual one.
Ireland, who was in everything from blockbuster Westerns like Red River and My Darling Clementine to B movie cheese like Fast and Furious, does a great job as the cantankerous director trying to finish his movie on time and on budget. Domergue (who is known for once being involved with Howard Hughes and then writing a book about it) is adequate as the disgruntled actress with her glory days behind her, mainly because she acts like she might have felt that way about her role in the actual movie.
Beyond that, it's seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff of movie-making which is interesting, and in fact, about the only thing that makes the film watchable until near the end, when somehow a chant from the Tibetan Book of the Dead raises some ghoul from the grave. Said ghoul then goes and does what corpses risen from the grave normally do and bodies start piling up, leading up to an ending that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, but at least stuff is happening.
This is for super fans of the genre who feel like they need to see every horror film ever made. It's available on Blu-ray, for some reason. A marginal 2.25 stars.
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