The House of the Seven Gables on AllMovie

Screenwriter Lester Cole, later one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, manages to subtly inject a bit of political dogma into his adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. George Sanders and Vincent Price play the Pynchon brothers, scions of an accursed family of American aristocrats. Sanders accuses Price of murdering their father, knowing full well that Price is innocent. The duplicitous Sanders then sets his sights on Price's fiancee Margaret Lindsay, hoping that she'll lead him to the family fortune, which has been secreted somewhere in the house of the title. Listen for the powerhouse scene in which Price sarcastically toasts his ancestors for having despoiled the land through their avariciousness and lust for power; credit this moment to the left-leaning Lester Cole. Director Joe May, a German expatriate, seems more comfortable with the atmospherics of House of the Seven Gables than he does with the dialogue.