The Seven Minutes

After scoring a hit at Fox with "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," Russ Meyer plays it straight with a courtroom drama? Well, sort of...

Irving Wallace's novel is a terrific, suspenseful read and Meyer does a good job bringing the story to the screen, completely replacing the "surprise" ending of the novel with one of his own. As you can probably imagine, Meyer can't really play anything straight, so this film is full of Meyer's bright colors and eye-popping, um, camera work. The man is a brilliant cinematographer, and this film looks just as good as any of his others that I've seen. Odd camera angles, fast cuts, bad acting, Edy Williams, and gratuitous cleavage shots are all here and well worth a look.

Beware of the old television print of this film, for sale in some US video outlets. The hack job done by the censors just ruins the film. Fox has a gorgeous print of the film around, as it has been shown on the FX channel in the past, open matte (unlike BVOD, this one wasn't shot in Panavision), fully uncut and looking brand new. Write the folks at Fox and demand a proper video release!

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.

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

After Russ Meyer hit it big with BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS for 20th Century Fox, he directed his second movie for the studio's two-picture deal with him. THE SEVEN MINUTES was a box office flop and ruined any chances Meyer may have had to continue with Fox. But I actually found myself liking this movie and while it's not as fantastic as his comedies or action flicks, MINUTES is still unique in its own way.

"The Seven Minutes" is a book that has been charged with obscenity and is blamed for leading a young boy to rape a girl. The film revolves around the court case against the book. That's pretty much it. Regular Meyer fans will be disappointed in this film, no doubt. While it does feature Edy Williams, Charles Napier, Stuart Lancaster, a young Tom Selleck, the actor who plays Martin Bormann, and the black boxer from BVD, these cast members appear in what amount to cameos and disappear very quickly. Yvonne de Carlo is great as an old-time Hollywood actress, though. The major problem with the film is that it is a serious film, not a slapstick comedy, a real turning point for Meyer. I wonder if he even wanted to make this film, as it is such a departure from his regular content.

THE SEVEN MINUTES is not filled with busty beauties or excellent music or outrageous situations, but features lots of Meyer's trademark lightning-quick editing and enough twists and turns in the plot to get the viewer involved in the story. The surprise ending is totally out of left field. Still, I would only recommend THE SEVEN MINUTES to diehard Meyer fans and even then, very carefully. The film is very hard to find, but I was able to rent it from Video Vault in Alexandria, VA. Even Meyer doesn't offer it on his Bosomania label! So if you spend lots of time searching for it, expecting another BVD or SUPERVIXENS, you will be disappointed when you finally see it. Worth one viewing.

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 ****