Three Americans arrive at a Scottish castle to lay claim to an inheritance. Since the will can’t be read for a few days, they decide to pass the time by holding a seance. Naturally, they wind up invoking the supernatural, which results in their relative’s corpse disappearing from his tomb. The will also disappears, and before long, people predictably start turning up dead.
Intermittently atmospheric and at other times dreary, The Seventh Grave is only fitfully entertaining. While the film is overlong to a fault (the subplot about a treasure hunt for the lost booty of Sir Francis Drake feels like nothing more than filler), it nevertheless has the occasional nifty moment to keep you watching. The seance scene, for example, where everyone sits around in a circle with hands outstretched pinkie to pinkie looks pretty cool and contains some neat camera angles. If only the rest of the flick had that same level of cinematic pizzazz, we might’ve had a decent little chiller on our hands.
Too bad the bulk of the film is an old hat. I mean, they’ve been making these Old Dark House reading-of-the-will murder mysteries since the advent of cinema, and The Seventh Grave doesn’t exactly find anything new to bring to the (seance) table. All the cliches from those old creaky movies (bodies turn up unexpectedly, romance blooms between two houseguests, an inspector doggedly combs the grounds for clues, etc.) are trotted out once again, and honestly, they really haven’t been given much of an update. Even someone like me who is predisposed to enjoy movies where women in flimsy negligées walk down darkened corridors while carrying gothic candlesticks found myself getting restless here and there. I guess it might not have been so bad if the film knew when to quit, but the long-winded plot wrap-up seems especially gratuitous.
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