"The House of Seven Hawks" would have been much better had it been produced by Robert Taylor's old employer, MGM. Instead, the film turned out to be quite a disappointment for Taylor, a man who had been a major star for two decades. I will say this; the opening is quite intriguing. Taylor's character agrees to transport a man from England to the Continent by boat, and does so. After arrival, however, he soon discovers that this simple business deal is quite a bit more complicated than what he expected.Sadly, the film does not take advantage of this clever opening. From that point on, it is rather routine.As others have suggested, this ends up being a rather lackluster B effort not close to the level of the films Taylor made for MGM. In that regard, this movie is similar to the 1959 efforts of Alan Ladd, a man whose great success in the 1940s and early 1950s was followed by some very mediocre productions. (In Ladd's case, the actor himself was largely to blame due to very poor judgment regarding choice of film projects.)My admiration for Robert Taylor has grown over time. He was a better actor than many gave him credit for. (I recommend his performances in "Bataan" and "Johnny Eager.") Sadly, this particular movie, though watchable, did nothing to enhance his reputation.

The year before this film came out Robert Taylor's long term contract came to an end with MGM. His was the longest contract to a studio in film history. There was a clause in his release which gave MGM the option for two more films. With The House Of The Seven Hawks, Taylor did the first of his two films to fulfill that commitment.It was a film like The House Of The Seven Hawks that probably made Robert Taylor think about television as a venue. It's a routine mystery adventure film that would have been done years earlier by MGM's B picture unit.The House Of The Seven Hawks casts Taylor as an American expatriate running a charter schooner service over in Great Britain. A man charters Taylor's boat and asks him to take him to the Netherlands. On the way the man collapses and dies and upon identifying him through his ID as a Dutch police inspector, Taylor feels he's stepped in a nice bucket of fertilizer. Especially since he had no clearance to leave English waters.Now the film would have been over if Taylor had simply left things untouched, but did his duty as a citizen and just reported the death. But no, he finds some cryptic directions taped to the dead man's abdomen and thinks there might be something in it for him. That got him into even a bigger mess involving a gang of former Nazis and a pair of beautiful women.The villains in this film are taken right out of the Maltese Falcon with Eric Pohlman and David Kossoff doing their best as a pair of continental Greenstreet and Lorres. As for beautiful woman number one, Linda Christian is a gal working her own agenda the same way Mary Astor was doing. There are some elements in the story line that could have come from The Maltese Falcon.Beautiful woman number two is Nicole Maurey, daughter of the dead police inspector who thinks Taylor might have done her father in for a while. Donald Wolfit is the Dutch police inspector who takes the case over from Nicole's dad and keeps a close tab on Taylor.Stealing every scene he's in is professional informer Philo Hauser who makes a living at the art of the doublecross.MGM did not even bother to invest The House Of The Seven Hawks with color cinematography. Certainly that would have captured some nice Dutch countryside. The film was the sixth of seven films Robert Taylor did for director Richard Thorpe and the last one for they did for MGM. Seven films with the same director might normally qualify them as a screen team. Thorpe did three of Taylor's best heroic films, Ivanhoe, Knights Of The Round Table, and Quentin Durward. He also did from Taylor's halcyon days at MGM, The Crowd Roars and Tip On A Dead Jockey. They would team up again for Killers of Kilimanjaro, Taylor's next film which was released by Columbia. My guess is that Thorpe and Taylor were a compatible pair and that's why MGM assigned him Taylor's pictures.Not even Robert Taylor's devoted fans would say this was one of his best roles. MGM was simply trying to work out a commitment and didn't invest much in The House Of The Seven Hawks. I'll bet the inducement of shooting in Europe and maybe taking along Ursula Thiess to visit her family on the continent was reason enough to do this film. And Taylor never balked too much at doing anything.A European trip was a good enough reason for accepting any film offer. Still The House Of The Seven Hawks will never be ranked by anyone as one of Robert Taylor's top ten.

This movie just doesn't have the most exciting or best mystery-elements around. It's a rather dull movie that lacks most of the required genre elements. Although it tries in parts- this is no film-noir but even for a 'standard' thriller type of movie this one just isn't good enough.The story isn't the most interesting one around but it's even worse how the story is told. Some of the sequences go on for far too long, without anything interesting happening in it. Problem is that the story felt the need to put in way too much (redundant) dialog. Guess that they just desperately tried to make the movie longer, since it's a quite short one (92 minutes). The movie really isn't build up well and in the beginning it's too unclear were the movie is trying to head to.The movie picks some weird and unbelievable plot-lines. Besides that, the movie also doesn't offer any real surprises. It's pretty clear from the beginning on who are going to be the good and bad guys and gals of the movie. It's true that the movie gets better toward the end but it's all too late to still fully save the movie. In its build up the movie simply lacks all the things needed to make a good and tense genre movie with. For a thriller this movie is just too dull and totally not interesting enough to follow. The characters all remain too flat and the only established actor in this movie is Robert Taylor, who does his very best but just can't carry this movie on his own. I mean this movie is not even good or really interesting to watch for the most hardened Robert Taylor fans.For me it was a big plus that the movie is set and actually filmed- and almost entirely set in The Netherlands. It was all very recognizable. It's locations and atmosphere works well for the movie, although it's too bad that they didn't made the trouble to cast Dutch actors in the roles of Dutch, not even for the bit parts, which was a bit distracting but obviously only should be so when you're Dutch yourself.By no means the worst genre movie I've ever seen but just not among one of the best or most refreshingly original ones either. Somewhat watchable but not really recommendable to anyone.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Very disappointing.Taylor was a very good looking man which netted him a good career in Hollywood and this film at least showed that he could swim! His acting ability did'nt amount to much but this film made no demands in that department.