House of Horrors *** (1946, Martin Kosleck, Rondo Hatton, Robert Lowery, Virginia Grey, Bill Goodwin, Alan Napier) – Classic Movie Review 12,461

Universal Pictures’ 1946 black and white cult horror film House of Horrors stars Rondo Hatton as a madman named The Creeper. It is also known as Joan Medford Is Missing. 

Director Jean Yarbrough’s 1946 Universal Pictures black and white horror film House of Horrors stars Rondo Hatton as a madman named The Creeper. It is also known as Joan Medford Is Missing.

Or Joan Medford (Virginia Grey) Is Missing.

House of Horrors is an amusing, engagingly performed little shocker about a suicidally depressed New York sculptor, Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck), who first rescues a madman known as The Creeper (Rondo Hatton) from a watery grave, and then despatches him to bump off those who don’t appreciate his art – the critics!. But Marcel becomes obsessed with Joan Medford (Virginia Grey), a beautiful reporter who believes the deaths are related.

Script weaknesses in dialogue and plotting let it down and Robert  Lowery and Gray are wasted as the romantic interest, but Kosleck and Hatton are very effective, and there are revealing sidelights on the New York art world and the odd views of women at the time.

Universal planned a series of Creeper films, and the second one, The Brute Man, was filmed in 1946. But Hatton died before either film was released of complications from acromegaly, a disorder that results in excess growth of parts of the human body. He had a career in films because his unique facial features, and starred in Universal horror films near the end of his life, earning a reputation as a cult icon.

House of Horrors was shot between September 11 1945 and September 25 1945,  premiered in New York on February 22, 1946, and was widely released on March 29.

It is written by George Bricker (screenplay) and Dwight V Babcock (original story).

The cast are Rondo Hatton as the Creeper, Martin Kosleck as Marcel de Lange, Robert Lowery as Steven Morrow, Virginia Grey as Joan Medford, Bill Goodwin as Lieutenant Larry Brooks, Alan Napier as F Holmes Harmon, Howard Freeman as Hal Ormiston, Virginia Christine as Lady of the Streets, Joan Shawlee [Joan Fulton] as Stella McNally, and Byron Foulger as Mr Samuels, Eddie Acuff, Mary Field, Perc Launders, Terry Mason, Jack Parker, Syd Saylor, Janet Shaw, and Charles Wagenheim.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,461

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