House of Horrors

House of Horrors is a creepy little shocker film that is quite well done. Interestingly it's working title was "The Sinister Shadow" before it was released. House Of Horrors was another Ben Pivar production and Ben could put this kind of horror film out in his sleep.Director Jean Yarbrough cut his teeth directing these kind of B thrillers and he went on to have a very successful career in television. I always considered Rondo Hatton to be sort of a walking prop. He's a bit more animated in this story then usual but here he's not so much the monster as he is the real monsters tool. Virginia Grey wasn't one of Universal's Screen Queens". She was loaned out for "House" from M-G-M. She's very good as the spirited reporter trying to get the story.Robert Lowery was a handsome and talented leading man but you could aways tell when he was really into his role or just picking up a paycheck.The dependable Alan Napier has a turn as an egotistical and sarcastic art critic. He so good in the role that the audience cheers when he gets his.

Martin Kosleck was, as my dad used to say,the poor man's Peter Lorre He could play sinister capably enough but he was a bit too subdued to play out and out crazy. In this story he is the real monster, however, creeping around in the shadows and letting Rondo do his dirty work.This is one of Koslecks biggest roles and his weaselly Marcel De Lange is one of his best characterizations

Its a shame that Rondo Hatton passed on just as his star was beginning to rise in the horror film Pantheon so to speak. Whether or not he could have lasted as a horror star nobody can say. The second horror cycle was beginning to dry out in 1946 so he could have slid back into obscurity had he lived.The American Horror Film Board presents the Rondo Award every year to deserving horror films and actors since 2002. Film fans vote on the recipients. So Rondo Hatton has achieved some degree of movie immortality.

Maybe it was because my expectations were low, but saw this on "Svenghoulie's" show and enjoyed it as an old black and white creepy movie from the late 1940s just as a Saturday night sort of thing. Not great but had some especially bright spots and a pretty decent cast and storyline, and kept you wondering what the outcome would be right up to the end. I kept expecting the story to fall apart at some point as it usually does in the ones shown on this show, but it kept continuing to be fairly engaging and had some cultural references to the art world that kept it fun to watch. I liked the portrayal of art critics and the art theme, and fun to see the actor who played "Big Jim Champion" on "Circus Boy" in a lead role, along with the monster dude who was an interesting character and had an interesting life story outside of the movie. All in all, fun to watch if you like old movies from the '40s and just want to see something not too deep or demanding that might remind you of a past era you find yourself able to get lost in.

Lunacy abounds...mostly amongst the few comments about this b-picture gem, but to that later. In this horror film, the lunacy of artist Martin Koslek directing the killer tendencies of Rondo Hatton to dispatch unfavorable art critics is inspired. It's quite a contrast to watch Koslek be wonderfully melodramatic while Hatton remains as flat as a board, which is perfect for his character. All this is done within the context of the period, and with all the elements mixing in a way to create, perhaps serendipitously, a chilling and vastly entertaining blend.

To the dimwits who have not been able to see beyond the constraints of their modern attitudes and mores, you are missing it. Rondo Hatton did not "intensely dislike" his brief career as a film fright figure, he was indifferent to it, and the prevailing common attitude towards working women in 1940s America was that they eventually would become married, stay-at-home mothers. The film isn't 'anti-feminist' at a time when the term feminist wasn't used, and when both men and women, not all but most, felt this way of life was appropriate.

So to you dunces I say, march onward, great re-writers of history, and make sure you burn Birth of a Nation, and continue to press Disney to never release Song of the South. Perhaps we ought to ban the Three Stooges, as well, for their insensitive, boorish portrayal of the common working man, and of course, to add insult to injury, they were also Jewish.

This movie is so much better than what I thought it'd be. Both Rondo Hatton as the psycho killer and Martin Kosleck as an artist driven to madness by unkind critics are villains, yet both are sympathetic in a way. What is especially touching is Kosleck's interaction with his pet cat and the closing scene where the cat curls up by his dead body. (Or did he die? The dialogue isn't clear on it.) It was effective and sorrowful.

My sole complaint is the woefully brief appearance of Virginia Christine as Creeper's first victim. I hardly had a chance to recognize her before she was offed. I always enjoy her early film appearances because she was an out and out fox. I would so much have enjoyed seeing her as the tennis model instead. Hubba-hubba!

In the Sherlock Holmes mystery "The Pearl of Death", an ominous character dubbed The Creeper had been debuted. The Creeper was played by a man named Rondo Hatton, who had been handsome as a youth, but had his facial features disfigured by acromegaly (a possible result of exposure to poison gas during WWI). The success of this character inspired Universal to create more movies that would focus on him, instead of making him a side player.

The first of the bunch was "House of Horrors", a story about a despondent, failed sculptor named Marcel DeLange (the great bad guy actor Martin Kosleck), who rescues the Creeper from a river, not knowing that the guy is a notorious serial killer. Soon, Marcel finds that the guy comes in handy, as he proceeds to bump off the nasty art critics that are the bane of the sculptors' existence (and the existence of other artists in the city). But Marcel won't be able to keep this secret forever....

Hatton is the main reason to watch here, playing a brute with a real screen presence. The script, by George Bricker, is often hilarious with its assortment of sardonic lines and witticisms, but the humour often works against the horror, taking up perhaps too much of the running time. But the whole cast is great: Robert Lowery as a temperamental painter, a stunning Joan Shawlee as his model, a sassy and sexy Virginia Grey as his girlfriend, Bill Goodwin as the obligatory cop on the case, Alan Napier as the acid-tongued critic F. Holmes Harmon, Virginia Christine as an incidental victim, and Howard Freeman as a critic who attempts to be the bait in a police trap. Kosleck is wonderful as a man who's worthy of some sympathy, even though he ultimately goes off the deep end.

Good atmosphere and a snappy pace are assets, as well as the assortment of truly dynamite-looking ladies (including Janet Shaw as a cabdriver).

Seven out of 10.