moonspinner55 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 ****

renovargas To my dismay the previous review was off. This movie is not for box office, that's the problem. It should have been a TV movie of the week, it would have done better which is where I saw it. It is like Perry Mason. The twist is who the author turned out to be since it was authored as a pseudonym, a male's name.The book in the movie was hot it's for modern day audiences. To be made in that time frame goes to show that it was way ahead of its time. I would re-release it, I had no idea it was a Russ Myers film that's what surprised me. He needs to be rediscovered. Russ does a great job. This is not one of his T&A movies. It has a story which is why fans of him were disappointed back in the day.Too much brain power for the people who want video game like movies like the Matrix. Watch it if you can.

secragt 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

gershom 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!