After a teenager, Jerry Griffith (John Sarno), who purchased the erotic novel The Seven Minutes is charged with rape, an eager prosecutor who is against pornography (and preparing for an upcoming election) uses the scandal to declare the book as obscene, sets up a sting operation where two detectives enter a bookstore and purchase a copy of the eponymous book, then the prosecutor brings charges against the bookstore for selling obscene material.

The young defense lawyer, Mike Barrett, must also solve the mystery of the novel's true author.

In examining the history of the book, the defense attorney discovered it was written by J.J. Jadway, an American expatriate living in Europe.

She proceeds to explain that the man with whom the female protagonist of the novel was having sex, as the book showed, had had problems with impotence, and had become able to experience intercourse because of her.

Her feeling of what this man reawakened in her, having not taken a lover for many years, makes her realize she wants to be with him – all of this occurring inside her head during her experience of the seven minutes of intercourse.

A note at the end of the movie states that for a woman during a session of lovemaking, the average length of time from initial arousal to orgasm is about seven minutes.

"[6] Fleischer withdrew, and the movie was assigned to Russ Meyer, who had directed Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for Fox.

"[10] As with many of his movies, Meyer used several actors from his previous productions, including then-wife Edy Williams, Charles Napier, Henry Rowland and James Iglehart.

Established actress Yvonne De Carlo makes an appearance along with veteran character actor Olan Soule.

[23] He informed female lead candidates that nudity would be integral to their roles,[23] and after casting interviews, considered Marianne McAndrew to be suitable.

[30] While the movie was being made Richard Zanuck was fired as head of production and was replaced by Elmo Williams.

The soundtrack contains three songs written by Stu Phillips (composer) and Bob Stone (lyricist): "Love Train" sung by Don Reed, "The Seven Minutes" performed by B.B.

"[35] Roger Ebert later said the movie "was unsuited to Meyer's strongest points, which are eroticism, action and parody in about equal doses.

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.

"[33] The New York Times' reviewer Roger Greenspun wrote "I don't think that a court of law is the right Russ Meyer arena, and The Seven Minutes, which had started out pretty well, bogs down hopelessly in its courtroom legalisms and its absolutely non-cliff-hanging rush to unearth the real identity of the mythical J.J. Jadway", citing some problems with the movie's complicated plot and "enormous cast of characters".

"[36] Variety wrote that Irving Wallace's original novel was a "potboiler" "which averted the essence of the problem in resolving the story", and noted that Russ Meyer was a "censor-exploited as well as a censor-exploiting filmmaker", who began with a story handicap and added a few of his own.

They expanded that Meyer used "cardboard-caricatures of his heavies" which obscured issues, and included the "regular time-out for the sexually-liberated dalliances which have been his stock in trade.

"[37] Filmink wrote "I think I’m the only person in the world who likes The Seven Minutes – I find it an entertaining, fast paced courtroom drama which deals with interesting issues, which is well directed and acted.