House of Horrors
                  
Director: Jean Yarbrough
Year: 1946
Rating: 6.0
"And Introducing Rondo Hatton as The Creeper". Well, not exactly. Hatton had been showing up in films in bit parts for a few years and had actually earned the moniker of The Creeper in the Basil Rathbone Holmes film The Pearl of Death. Sadly, Hatton was coming to the end of his days and was to die from a heart-attack before this and his following film, The Brute Man, were released. Brute Man is a prequel to this film. Once you have seen the face of Rondo, you will never forget it. A nightmare in reality and yet in its way beautiful with the craggy structure. Pictures of Hatton as a young man show a handsome man and he was in fact voted Handsomest Man of his class. He had ambitions as a journalist but first went off to war - chasing down Pancho Villa in Mexico and then off to fight the Germans where he was hit by mustard gas. He was married when he first came down with acromegaly, a bone disease that changes the structure of your face. A face that was made for horror but a proud sad face. His wife divorced him because of the face, but he married again - giving all of us hope. He was by all accounts a very nice man who accepted his fate without self-pity. He was only in a few films where he had a large part but is a horror icon and has an award named for him. The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award given to people who helped preserve horror films. The trophy is based on his sculpture in this film. You can't keep your eyes off of him in this film and cinematographer Maury Gertsman shoots him in near noir style.

 

Universal was on its last legs in the horror field but were pumping out a number of B horror film - though they were to close down their B division within another year. There were a few House horror films - House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, House of Fear (Sherlock Holmes) - and so Universal added another one though there is in fact no house in the film really. An apartment but Apartment of Horrors doesn't have the same ring to it. Martin Kosleck who was usually stuck playing Nazis gets one of his better and bigger roles here. As a psychotic but sympathetic sculptor with questionable talent. But he has a cat who follows him around like a dog. The cat has a good role too. Perhaps his biggest. Marcel (Kosleck) thinks he has made a sale to a customer, but an art critic played by Alan Napier (Alfred in the Batman TV series) tells the customer it is a piece of junk and the sale does not go through.

 

Marcel goes to throw himself into the river but instead sees a man trying to drag himself out. He saves him, brings him home, shows him kindness and becomes friends. He also wants to sculpt his face. It is the Creeper. That night the Creeper goes out and just for the heck of it kills a woman who is clearly a prostitute (Virginia Christine) renting her wares in the wrong part of town - by snapping her spine. "She screamed" he explains later. Marcel tells him about the art critic and where he can be found and the next thing you know, he is found dead with his spine broken. Marcel sees the light. There are probably a lot of artists in the world who wish they could do the same to high-toned pretentious critics who enjoy making mincemeat of artists when they have no talent themselves. There is a dame in the story - another art critic played by Virginia Grey in an array of great hats, and an eye-opening model (Joan Shawlee with over 100 acting credits) and the romantic angle is Robert Lowery - but this film belongs to Hatton and Kosleck.  Directed by Jean Yarbrough who was also to direct The Brute Man.