House of Horrors (1946)
3.3 of 5 from 46 ratings
1h 5min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck) is a struggling sculptor whose work and sanity are derided by the New York art critics. After waspishly officious critic F. Holmes Harmon (Alan Napier) ruins a sale for De Lange by dismissing his expressionistic cubist work as "tripe" and later gloating about it in his column, the distraught artist goes to the river to drown himself. There he discovers the half-drowned body of the notorious serial killer, the Creeper (Rondo Hatton), and takes him back to his studio to recover. Feeling empowered by the friendship of the acromegalic sociopath, De Lange tasks him with murdering the critics who have pilloried him in print. When successful commercial artist Steve Morrow (Robert Lowery) is wrongly suspected of the crimes, his art critic girlfriend Joan Medford (Virginia Grey) decides to follow her instinct about a mysterious bust De Lange has suspiciously covered in his studio, and she decides to snoop around. - Actors:
- Robert Lowery, Virginia Grey, Bill Goodwin, Martin Kosleck, Alan Napier, Howard Freeman, Virginia Christine, Joan Shawlee, Rondo Hatton, Oliver Blake, Mary Field, Byron Foulger, Perc Launders, Terry Mason, William Newell, Jack Parker, Syd Saylor, Janet Shaw, Charles Wagenheim
- Directors:
- Jean Yarbrough
- Producers:
- Ben Pivar
- Writers:
- George Bricker, Dwight V. Babcock
- Aka:
- Murder Mansion / Joan Medford Is Missing / Sinister Shadow
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama, Horror, Romance, Thrillers
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Reviews (1) of House of Horrors
Universal Horror. - House of Horrors review by Steve
Classic film fans know Rondo Hatton as The Creeper in the 1944 Sherlock Holmes programmer, The Pearl of Death. Universal planned to use him in the same role for his own series of horror releases. Of course, it was his acromegaly that deformed him into the 'monster without makeup'. So there is some squeamishness in watching his misfortune made into a franchise.
Anyway, he died after his next Creeper film and he is mostly remembered now for that Sherlock Holmes performance. But this oddball B horror is well worth a look. It's part of an attempt to bring Universal horror out of the gothic and into the contemporary. Martin Kosleck co-stars as a psychopathic modern artist who compels the brute to kill his critics.
The sculptor pulls the Creeper out of the bay as he is about to throw himself in, so there is an impression that the colossus represents his own grotesque, suppressed psyche. The other male leads are colourless, but Virginia Grey is lively as a girl reporter, and she gets some fabulous wisecracks. Actually, the pulpy dialogue is a standout.
And Joan Shawlee brings some jaw-dropping glamour as a sassy model. This is just a 65 minute, low budget shocker. But it is offbeat, and twisted. And a change of direction for the studio, squeezed into the void between Universal gothic and '50s science fiction. With the kind of shadowy pessimism we also get from '40's film noir.
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