La settima tomba

You could be forgiven for not recognising the name of the director of this one - this was Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo's only film. And it's remained a pretty obscure entry in the Italian gothic cycle ever since. The story concerns a group who are travelling through 'Old Scotland' to a castle for the reading of the will of a dead relative, Sir Reginald. Before long the groundskeeper is found dead and Sir Reginald's body has vanished from the crypt. Could it be the dead aristocrat who subsequently stalks and terrorises these greedy guests?

I guess it would be fair to say that this isn't an upper-level example of this kind of thing. But then again, these old Italian gothics don't really need to do too much to basically work in my opinion. Throw together a crumbling gothic location, some spooky goings on, some attractive black and white photography and a gorgeous gothic girl, and usually you're going to have enough ingredients to get over the line in this sub-genre. This film's no different, as it works due to its atmosphere and feel, more than its plot mechanics, which are as routine as most of these types of things are. It does have some effective moments though, such as the séance scene, where the greedy relatives try to evoke the dead spirit of their ancestor in order to locate the hidden treasure of Sir Francis Drake (!!?). This whole sequence is shot nicely with some interesting angles and it does end with the psychic lady repeatedly shouting 'Dan' in a way which somewhat improbably recalls a much later hilarious scene from 'I'm Alan Partridge' - I wonder if Steve Coogan saw this on late night telly back in the 80's, leading to the Seventh Grave influencing one of the greatest TV comedy characters ever? In all honesty, probably not. On a final note, it was kind of interesting to see a couple of obscure Italian performers appear in this one - Jenkins is played by Antonio Casale who was no less than the key character Bill Carson from the western classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, while Fred is played by a fresh-faced Gianni Dei who would go on to star in the notorious sleaze-fest Giallo a Venezia.