The Seven Minutes

Adaptation of Irving Wallace's book about a 30-year-old novel titled "The Seven Minutes," banned worldwide for three decades as being depraved and obscene, coming under fire once again after the son of a major political contributor in California is charged with raping a girl--under the influence of the erotic material! This coincides with the case of a bookstore manager arrested for selling a recent reprint of "The Seven Minutes", resulting in a trial that pits pornography against free speech. Director Russ Meyer's second (and final) film for 20th Century Fox is admirably serious in its attempt to show the hypocrisy of so-called purveyors of decency and political opportunists looking for a legal scapegoat, yet it is too bogged down in talk to appeal to Meyer's fan-base (despite the quick cutting which reduces most shots to a length of seven seconds or less). Yvonne De Carlo has a bravura cameo in the third act as a key witness for the defense, and there's an amusingly old-fashioned tag featuring the defense attorney and his girl making love in front of a roaring fire. But the majority of "The Seven Minutes" concerns itself with the legal protection of salacious material instead of the usual Russ Meyer presentation of salacious material, which didn't thrill audiences in 1971 and probably won't today. *1/2 from ****

The Seven Minutes was Russ Meyer's follow up to his big studio debut, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. That one made a lot of money for 20th Century Fox but also caused it a fair bit of embarrassment and flack due to its salacious content and X rating. The Seven Minutes was the second film in his two picture deal and it went down a much less controversial route. It takes the form of a courtroom drama and perhaps unsurprisingly, unlike its predecessor, it bombed at the box office. But as is the way, despite the unfamiliar subject matter, it's still pretty obvious as a Meyer movie and is ultimately quite a strange film.

On the face of it, The Seven Minutes is a serious drama but Meyer seems incapable of playing it straight. His distinctive camera-work and super-fast editing are still in abundance. While he still makes space for a bevy of buxom women who appear throughout, such as Shawn 'Baby Doll' Deveraux. In truth, Meyer had no interest adapting the Irving Wallace novel that the film is based on but the studio insisted. In the end he figured the subject of freedom of speech and censorship was something he knew about from past experience and could make something interesting with it. But Fox felt battered by the publicity that they had attracted with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and the similarly X rated Myra Breckinridge, so they made it clear that The Seven Minutes must make an R rating. Consequently, it is easily the most restrained outing he ever released.

The story boils down to a court case about a book called 'The Seven Minutes' which is considered obscene, so much so that it is accused of inspiring a vicious rape. The title refers to the average time that a woman takes to achieve orgasm. To be honest, going into this film I didn't have very high expectations. Its reputation sort of goes before it and the very idea of Meyer directing a film not based around buxom women set off alarm bells, seeing as they always seemed so integral to the success of everything else he did. As it turned out, I was very pleasantly surprised with this flick. Despite being a courtroom drama it still retains enough Meyer madness to ensure it's fascinating. In truth, his fast editing style is wholly inappropriate for such a film, the twists and turns of the plot end up coming at us so fast that it's very hard keeping up with plot developments, while the appearances of the pneumatic women that punctuate the movie are completely incongruous for a film trying to make a serious point! But ultimately, its aspects like these that makes it more interesting at the end of the day. The extreme melodramatic tendencies and bizarre tone and presentation are what mark it out. Make no mistake, it's not up there with Meyer's best movies but who in all seriousness would expect it to be? It's his least typical film though that's for sure and its one I am pleased to have finally seen. It's notable too for featuring a young Tom Selleck as well as a cameo from veteran actor John Carradine; it also features Meyer regulars Charles Napier, Stuart Lancaster and his then wife, Edy Williams.

The odds of Russ Meyer helming an intellectual courtroom drama think-piece on freedom of speech and civil rights are almost as long as his helming the number one grossing box-office movie the year before (BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), but both occurred in a two-year period in the early 70s. Obviously one begat the other, but the cycle never repeated. Still, a case can be made for FOX assigning this movie to Meyer given his experience with censorship from his earlier forays into soft porn, which always ran the gamut between "guilty pleasure" and "good-humored raunch of dubious taste." Whatever your opinion of his sensibilities, Meyer always knew what his public wanted and he supplied it in copious quantity. With the possible exception of THE SEVEN MINUTES, that is.

What is THE SEVEN MINUTES? Well, it's Russ Meyer's lone attempt to Get Serious and Topical. While Meyer is intellectually up to the task, and halfway accomplishes the tough goal of laying out the controversies convincingly, he's not up to resolving things in a credible manner. The first half is a bit amateurish and thin but it is the second half where the bottom really falls out. In particular, Meyer tries to cram so many twists into the wacky denouement that any commentary he has previously made is lost. Perhaps all of this is satire of the politicization he is documenting, but if so, it's too uneven. Worse, it's not entertaining.

In one movie Meyer single-handedly alienated serious moviegoers, who stayed away merely based on his name. At the same time, he turned off his core audience, who could not have possibly been prepared for the utterly non-Russ Meyer product he delivered in THE SEVEN MINUTES. The trademark titillation, violence and bawdiness of his entire prior filmography is absent, replaced by sensationalized but strangely static courtroom dialogue. Meyer was never quite the same afterward and subsequently only made three or four more movies in the next 33 years after having made 18 in the preceding 11.

Still, if you like to see the Seventies at its most excessive and overly indulgent, this is a precious cautionary time capsule showing how someone successful in one area could not harness his skills in another. It's so breathtakingly, in-your-face bad that you might find it amusing. 1.5 / 10

During the time of VHS the only way to get new copies of Russ Meyer movies would be to order them directly from his marketing outlet. I called to get The Seven Minutes and I was told he didn't own the rights to the movie or to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Both movie were assignments and not personally produced by him. I asked, "Are you Russ Meyers?" and to my astonishment he answered "Yes". We chatted for 20 minutes. 35 years later I have finally tracked the original through an English distributor. It's exactly as I remember when I saw it as a 16 year old. It did not drive me murder. The small crowd I saw it with was hurling derisive comments at the screen throughout. It is a scream. It's hard to describe. It's one of a kind. For a film buff and a Meyer fan like myself it is a hoot. Stars galore, all playing it straight but you can see it in their eyes that they're having a walloping good time. Pious and self-patronizing as only Russ Meyer could do. All tongue-in-cheek. Anyone taking this seriously has missed the point. Not the same over-the-top as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and certainly not the unbridled, raunchy sex fare of his personally produced classics. But it's the kind of sly slight at puritanical mores that only Meyer could pull off . It is a riot. The story revolves around the possible obscenity of the book The Seven Minutes and local government officials using it as a political cudgel. In this regard it's quite topical in a smirking way. It's a must see for those with sense of humor. Star gazing at its best. Carey, Flippen and De Carlo are especially fun.

I just watched this film on Bravo. While I admit to being a bit of a Russ Meyer fan in the same way many people slow down to look at train wrecks, I actually found this movie surprisingly entertaining. Russ Meyer is the master of campy dialogue, bizarre twists and nonsensical plots, and of course larger (pun intended) than life characters. This movie has them all, but at a much more subdued level than most of his other films. In many ways, this film works ... much better at least than other Russ Meyer films.

If you are looking for a quality film delving into the drama of the courtroom, forget it here. With even a modicum of legal savvy it is easy to see all the holes in the courtroom antics of both sides. The twist at the end might be typical Russ Meyer, but it was also pretty predictable. Normally, I dislike predictability in a movie, but Russ Meyer flicks are usually such mixed up, twisted messes, that seeing a plot actually come to fruition with a credible twist that fits into the rest of the story was a bit of a treat.

I echo the sentiments of other users when they say that this is not a Russ Meyer fan's movie. Unfortunately, the only people who likely will ever see this film are the serious Russ Meyer fans who want to see everything the man has made. (Said fans can look for the cameo of Russ as well, in true Hitchcockian style *smile*.) I felt this was a good film, easy to watch, fun and sexy at times, with a few valuable (yet no doubt satirical) comments about the hypocrisy of the day. Being that Russ had his own personal problems with censorship, the movie is an obvious "poke-in-the-nose" at all the holier-than-thou types out to save society while wallowing in their own debauchery.

My Rating: 7 / 10 (Unless you are looking for a Russ Meyer genre film, then only 2 / 10)