A real-life monstrosity in a luridly bizarre B horror film.

Dewey1960

HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946) comes at the very tail end of Universal's classic horror film cycle, following on the heels of 1930s box office blockbusters like Dracula, FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN and THE BLACK CAT. By the 1940s, however, the studio's established monsters had been relegated to a succession of sequels with mixed and varying results. Ultimately, as budgets shrank and the big stars like Karloff and Lugosi drifted off to other studios, Universal began producing very low budget (although generally very entertaining) B horror melodramas such as CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, THE MAD GHOUL, and, most notoriously, HOUSE OF HORRORS. For many, this film was particularly repellent because its star, Rondo Hatton, suffered from a horribly disfiguring and ultimately degenerative disease called acromegaly. He appeared in a small number of cheap-jack horror thrillers, HOUSE OF HORRORS definitely being the best of the lot. In it he (again) appears as The Creeper, a deformed, deranged killer thought to have drowned in the East River after a police manhunt. He is, however, rescued by a suicidal sculptor named Marcel De Lange (wonderfully played by Martin Kosleck) who spots him in the river just as De Lange is about to take his own life. He brings the monster back to his skid row studio where he not only nurses him back to life but develops a strange, impenetrable bond with him. This bond extends itself into killing off a number of art critics (as well as sexy streetwalkers and models) who have denounced De Lange as a fraudulent disgrace to the art world by first strangling them then snapping their spines. Ultimately The Creeper and De Lange are outwitted and brought down by a girl newspaper columnist (Virginia Grey) and her pin-up artist boyfriend (Robert Lowery). A dim-witted cop (Bill Goodwin) provides little help at all. Despite the rather dismal reputation this film has, it is nonetheless an effectively atmospheric and peculiarly disturbing story, perhaps most accurately described as horror noir. Put aside whatever reservations you may have about this bizarre oddity and check it out.

score 7/10

Dewey1960 12 July 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1418434/