For a 1940's movie, it's filled with clichés! Not a bad thing.

insomniac_rod

I'm talking about the famous cliché of trying to open the door but the doorknob gets stuck and the female lead cannot escape from the villain. This time it happened when the great Rondo tried to capture her!

This isn't the generic monster-chasing the heroine. In fact, there's an interesting plot that deals with a mad sculptor gone evil because his work isn't "understood". So he is aided by the infamous Creeper who almost died in the previous film.

The acting is solid and the fact that most of the situations center around The Creeper, demonstrate it that exploitation towards "strange" looking people has happened since "Freaks". Now, in the 40's it was considered as something "entertaining", "freak circus entertaining". Today it would be considered as something against good behaviors or something like that.

Rondo delivers a fine performance and I truly enjoyed his evil lurking and walking. For example, the way we see his shadow slowly moving was creepy. The Direction is fine and classy.

The low point of the movie happens when the events get kind of dull and hard to believe. Some corny dialogs and situations make it less entertaining and affect the suspense factor.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting Universalesque feature that if not considered as a monster feature, it has all the characteristics to make us believe that Rondo was the main reason to watch this movie.

The ending was very good. I liked how the bullet cracked the window and reached Rondo. Well, you have to watch it to believe it.

score 6/10

insomniac_rod 7 March 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2217698/