House of Horrors (1946)

An unsuccessful sculptor saves a madman named "The Creeper" from drowning. Seeing an opportunity for revenge, he tricks the psycho into murdering his critics.

Director:

Jean Yarbrough

Writers:

George Bricker (screenplay), Dwight V. Babcock (original story)

Stars:

Rondo Hatton, Robert Lowery, Virginia Grey

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Rondo Hatton	...	The Creeper
Robert Lowery	...	Steven Morrow
Virginia Grey	...	Joan Medford
Bill Goodwin	...	Police Lt. Larry Brooks
Martin Kosleck	...	Marcel De Lange
Alan Napier	...	F. Holmes Harmon
Howard Freeman	...	Hal Ormiston
Virginia Christine	...	Lady of the Streets
Joan Shawlee	...	Stella McNally (as Joan Fulton)

Storyline

Marcel De Lange is a struggling sculptor whose work and sanity are derided by the New York art critics. After waspishly officious critic F. Holmes Harmon 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, 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 is wrongly suspected of the crimes, his art critic girlfriend Joan Medford decides to follow her instinct about a mysterious bust De Lange has suspiciously covered in his studio, and she decides to snoop around.

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Plot Keywords:

sculptor | art critic | art | serial killer | bust | 

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Taglines:

Meet...The CREEPER!

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Genres:

Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 March 1946 (USA)

Also Known As:

Murder Mansion

Filming Locations:

Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

65 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Part of the original SHOCK THEATER package of 52 Universal titles released to television in 1957, followed a year later with SON OF SHOCK, which added 21 more features.

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Goofs

After the Creeper kills De Lange and smashes the bust, Joan runs to the studio door and finds it locked. It would have been much more sensible for her to have tried fleeing the studio while De Lange and the Creeper were fighting.

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Quotes

The Creeper: [Looking at the spartan meal given to him by De Lange] No meat?

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Connections

Followed by The Brute Man (1946)

User Reviews

The artists ' revenge

More than "the creeper" himself ,the real monster is Marcel (a sculptor with a French name meaning "from the angel"!)Martin Kosleck is actually the stand out with his piercing eyes,his banal look and his aspiration for glory ;at the beginning he seems a nice guy feeding his pet cat and coming to a man's rescue.But further acquaintance shows this :he gradually goes nuts and the statue becomes a transparent metaphor for the monster he is creating (a Frankensteinesque relationship,which the ending confirms).

This is also a fierce attack on art critics "who judge works but do not know they are judged by them "(Jean Cocteau),a subject which "theatre of blood" will resume in the seventies.