Watch The House of the Seven Gables For Free

Very disappointing...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Despite a good cast, this is not a good film. The holes in George Sanders' acting begins to show up. You can see it in other films when he's trying hard to act, but he's not really an actor, he just needs a good script and a good director to get the best out of him. I think he is really lucky to have the career he had. The end scene in this film highlights his limited acting ability.Vincent Price on the other hand is the superior actor and wins out in the end. His career lasts longer, and delivers a more varied performance in this film compared with Sanders. But in spite of his performance this is not a good film for Sanders or Price fans. They did a better job together in 'Green Hell'.

I visited the house of seven Gables in 1996 & I fell in love with the house from that day on. I dreamed of living in a house like that full of love in it & with the man I love. It is the most beautiful house I ever saw. I will always love the house for all eternity. I believe the house loves me too. I am a woman who loves the victorian age. I am now going to be 52 years old & on my second life with a chef. I hope to visit the house before the end of my life. It feels as if the house is calling me to it. Maybe in the summer we will go there to see the house again & then I will whisper to the house that I came back to tell it I love it & I belong there I believe.

Despite the fact that this is a compressed and revised version of the Hawthorne novel, THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES manages to overcome its budget limitations (on a B-film scale) to become an interesting, if over-plotted version of the original story.Margaret Lindsay, who usually had second femme leads at Warner Brothers during the '30s, is the central character here and acquits herself admirably. She's so good as the repressed Cousin Hepzibah, a bitter woman who becomes a reclusive owner of the house, that's it's a wonder she didn't have a bigger career. Others in the cast, including George Sanders, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, Dick Foran and Cecil Kellaway, perform admirably too. In fact, the acting is on the strong side and better than the script deserves.But for all its strengths, the story is too complex to be told in 90 minutes and much had to be handled too swiftly to give any of the characters real depth. It's a nice try, and the film itself is worth seeing as a product of its time.

The screen writer took great liberties with the original work by Hawthorne. Relationships are changed to allow a love interest. Hepzibah Pyncheon becomes the cousin of Clifford Pyncheon, rather than his sister, to allow the romance to weave itself throughout the film. Also the character of Clifford is altered to make him heroic, something he is not in the book. Added are a trial, which was never in the book. Great emphasis is place on the dedication of Matthew Maule to the cause of abolition. Hawthorne never stressed this. The greatest shortcoming is the lack of emphasis on the house itself. It plays a major role in the novel but in the film it is just another building in which the action takes place. Overall it is not a bad film but if one is trying to capture the essence of what Hawthorne was writing, the film misses the major points.