HOUSE OF SHADOWS (1976)- Ugh!

If this blog is any indicator (and, of course, it is) I am a big fan of movies. I may gravitate to the horror, mystery and science fiction genres but I really do love all kinds of movies. And for decades I have had a hard fast rule that once I start watching a film I must eventually finish it. It might take a long time for me to come back to a particular movie but no matter how unimpressed I have been so far I WILL finish the sucker. To be honest I am still trying to work up the mental strength and sheer willpower to finish the atrocious Euro-Trash crapfest CANNIBAL TERROR (1980) but I promise I will. Really. Seriously.

I’m not saying that I have never decided to walk away from a film and forget about checking out the remainder of the running time. There are a handful of movies over the past five or so years that have bored me or not engaged me well enough that I have felt it was not worth returning to give it more of my time. Several of these are romantic comedies and that is all I will say. But as of last night I have found another film that I am just going to walk away from and never return to discover what happened. HOUSE OF SHADOWS (1976) has been lurking in my NetFlix cue for years now. With its fairly compelling poster art and a couple of cast members I enjoy watching I thought it looked intriguing enough and last night was finally its moment. I fired it up thinking I could get about an hour of it watched before I needed to go to bed but after 10 minutes I threw up my hands and stopped it. And this was after I had backed it up once because I thought the streaming service had somehow screwed up and skipped part of the film! As soon as the opening credits ended the film jumped forward and completely past a sequence that all the characters onscreen were TALKING ABOUT! And they were talking about it as if we had seen what they are discussing! I was confused but I let it go thinking that maybe there was some explanation coming but there wasn’t. I pushed the old stop button and called it a night. I don’t need this crap! Maybe what NetFlix offering is a butchered version of the film – I don’t know - but I’m done with it. I’m moving on to some other obscure film in my giant cue. Maybe TIMESTOPPERS? Or REC 3?