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!