There's no chance this will ever be called a classic, though it's nowhere near as bad as it's been painted.
Whatever you do, make sure that you watch the first five minutes. Hitchcock clearly has had a lot of fun showing off the tricks of the trade that he had learned in Germany, and the film is often a delight to watch.
On the other hand, the plot is complete tripe, and it can start to grate in the middle of this short film. People get captured and freed more often than in an old Doctor Who episode. But the basic plot can't be that awful -- it has been used regularly enough in the cinema -- groups of strangers gather by accident in a deserted house and are rarely what they seem. And when did anybody worry about consistencies in the plot of a Hitchcock film? However, if you get tired of the nonsense that develops, simply fast-forward to the final, and very long, chase sequence, which is genuinely exciting (even if there's more of the capture and rescue). There's a twist, a happy ending, and a cheery laugh to round everything off, which is a trick Hitchcock didn't learn in Germany.
Whatever you do, make sure that you watch the first five minutes. Hitchcock clearly has had a lot of fun showing off the tricks of the trade that he had learned in Germany, and the film is often a delight to watch.
On the other hand, the plot is complete tripe, and it can start to grate in the middle of this short film. People get captured and freed more often than in an old Doctor Who episode. But the basic plot can't be that awful -- it has been used regularly enough in the cinema -- groups of strangers gather by accident in a deserted house and are rarely what they seem. And when did anybody worry about consistencies in the plot of a Hitchcock film? However, if you get tired of the nonsense that develops, simply fast-forward to the final, and very long, chase sequence, which is genuinely exciting (even if there's more of the capture and rescue). There's a twist, a happy ending, and a cheery laugh to round everything off, which is a trick Hitchcock didn't learn in Germany.