Ebert admitted there were some nice touches like making a U.S. Senator from California a woman played by Yvonne De Carlo "but Meyer's main thrust seemed to be to bring "The Seven Minutes" to the screen more or less faithfully and seriously, and I think that was a mistake. The courtroom scenes and philosophical discussions clashed with the melodrama (as they also do in the Irving Wallace novel), and the result was a film of a project that should probably not have been made at all, and certainly not by Russ Meyer."