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 A sculptor gets revenge on the critics that "badmouthed his work,dooming him to
a life of poverty" teaming up with a "deformed killer who's wanted for snapping his victims'
spines." The killer is known as the Creeper and the character
first appeared in The Pearl of Death and only two more pictures in a planned series featuring the character
were ever completed. 1946, 65 minutes, VHS
This is another one of those Rondo Hatton movies about a really ugly dude named
the Creeper that breaks people's spines. Aside from the fact that the guy's
name is Rondo, you may be wondering what qualities he had that made Universal
want to build a no-budget thriller franchise around his Creeper character.
Well, he was afflicted by some type of disease that made him bumpy and humpy
(see the review of The Brute Man for all the icky details) and he also had no acting ability, no screen
presence, or anyway to say his lines so that you could understand him, let
alone believe what he was saying. Luckily, the filmmaker's realized what a gem
they had on their hands and limited Rondo's dialogue to very short sentences
and phrases. Even with this abbreviated speaking role, you quickly come to the
conclusion that the Creeper would have been a much more effective villain if he
had been The Mute Creeper. Then we could only assume that he couldn't act out
his dialogue convincingly instead of having it thrown in our face. The
background on the Creeper is as twisted as the spines of the hookers that
patrol the neighborhoods favored by really deformed dudes. The Creeper was
originally known as the Hoxton Creeper and his base of operations was a
Sherlock Holmes movie (which Conan Doyle story is your favorite Creeper
mystery?) that took place in London. He was also in another Holmes movie but
not as the Creeper. Next was this thing called House Of Horrors and following that was The Brute Man. That was the last one because Rondo croaked before it was released. To
really get a handle on the complicated mythos and origins of the Creeper it's
best that you view The Brute Man first. Of course, if you do that, you'll never bother to seek out the rest of
the Creeper's misadventures. In that truly awful film (much worse than House Of Horrors), we learn that the Creeper is some spurned college jock that had a bunch of
chemicals blow up on him and turn him into the lovable spine-snapping mug that
hangs out on the docks today. I suppose that House Of Horrors takes place after
the events in the film (the Creeper has been killing people even before House Of Horrors starts and is thought dead). I have no idea where the Sherlock Holmes movies
fit in, but maybe it's one of those Jack The Ripper type deals where he simply
disappeared from London, caught a Mayflower, and landed in the good old U.S. of
A. In any event, I think we can all agree that it was a good career move to
drop "Hoxton" from his moniker. It kind of gives you that "local thug" vibe
that can limit your buzz across the country.  Marcel de Lange is the name of this sculptor who lives hand to mouth, mainly
because his pieces are dreadful. He's got all these ugly statues around his
spacious studio apartment and they are of portions of bodies, frequently all
twisted up on each other with arms and legs jutting out to and fro like some
kind of thing they would put up in front of the Twister game headquarters or at
one of those hoity-toity universities where all our tax dollars get us is a
bunch of longhairs bad mouthing this country. Marcel has a pet cat that he
whines and complains to and you wonder why this cat, who seems like it's got a
good head on its shoulders (it refuses to eat some stinky cheese Marcel offers
it in lieu of milk), doesn't just leave this loser. Marcel though is one of
those guys who thinks that all he needs to do is sell some sculpture to some
art-mark and then he (and his puddy-tat) would be set for life. It just so
happens that he has been working on a piece for some guy with more money than
synapses and the dude is coming over this very night to pick it up and pay
Marcel handsomely for it. When the guy finally arrives he also brings along
Holmes Harmon. Holmes Harmon is not a boxer or a law firm as his name
suggests, but is an art critic for one of those big NYC papers. He's a tall
guy that delights in tearing the work of crazy artists like Marcel down.
Marcel's customer has brought him along to make sure that he isn't wasting his
money on the thing that Marcel made him. Holmes takes a gander at this
monstrosity that Marcel's warped little mind has cooked up, pronounces it dog
doo and Marcel's deal is dead. That's a pretty interesting business
arrangement they must have had. Marcel does all this work, gets no money up
front, and then the customer can refuse to pay for it, because some snotty
guy that can't paint or sculpt on his own says its crap. A sidenote about all
this is that the artwork in question is undoubtedly the ugliest piece of junk
you've seen since all those paintings we saw Edward G. Robinson paint in Scarlet Street. Once Marcel realizes that he's going to have to put this piece in the
clearance isle of his studio apartment, he runs them out at knife point. Then
he takes a hammer and smashes up the sculpture (Hey, now it's performance art !
Call it "Portrait of a No Talent Sculptor Realizing How Worthless He Is." How
long is it playing by the way? I think my friends would enjoy it.)  Marcel prances off to the docks to pout and contemplate suicide or whatever it
is that artists that overestimate their own talent do once they realize they
should have taken that job at the Rubbermade factory right out of high school.
He looks down into the swirling water and what does he see? A flashback! And
not just any flashback, but a flashback of the scene we just saw! It was
great. In case you happened to miss the first five minutes of the movie, they
were going to catch you all up in minute number six. Now, it doesn't really
last all that long, but I think they could have come up with a more creative
way of showing that this guy was despondent. Thankfully, before he can start
flashing back about that time he was down at the docks thinking about what just
happened, he sees a body in the drink and it's trying to pull itself out! He
runs on down the water's edge, lends a hand and pulls out Rondo Hatton! We
know that Marcel is a demented artist at this point, because anyone else would
have thrown it back into the water, but he takes Rondo home and nurses him back
to health. This turns out to be good news for Marcel's cat, because now Marcel
cry babies about his lot in life to Rondo. You all know how this conversation
goes: We don't have any money. We don't have any food. No one appreciates my
genius. I wish some big ugly goof would just snap all their spines. Somehow,
Rondo manages to communicate to Marcel (it may have been English, but who could
really tell) that he'll be Marcel's friend because Marcel is nice to him and
doesn't get scared of his unconventional looks. Of course, Marcel also sculpts
bizarre combinations of body parts no one wants to buy, but you take your
friends where you can find them. Marcel decides that his next big project will
be to sculpt an enormous bust of Rondo's head. As an artist interesting in
selling his work, Marcel really needs to ask himself, "what is the market for
the art that I am creating?" "Who is going to want to stare at a 100 pound
reproduction of Rondo Hatton's head all day?" Other than the dude at Universal
in the mid-forties that thought this Creeper stuff was going to be the next
Frankenstein Monster, I'm guessing nobody. So Marcel mopes around at dinner
complaining about the column that Holmes Harmon wrote making fun of him and the
next thing you know, Rondo is outside killing prostitutes. I guess that was
just to get his sea legs back under him, because it isn't too long before he's
skulking over to HH's newspaper office in the middle of the night.  Before Rondo can get to this guy's office, another art critic shows up to see
HH. Her name is Joan Medford and she's a spunky gal who is in love with an
artist by the name of Steven Morrow. HH is busy vivisecting Morrow's work
since he doesn't believe that pin-up work is real art. Joan tries to convince
HH to give her boyfriend a good review and even comes on to the guy in an
attempt to butter him up. Attention Joan: He doesn't like pin-up art - you're
buttering up the wrong ear of corn. He does ask her out to dinner to maintain
his cover and she eventually leaves, giving Rondo a chance to spine-break the
yellow off this guy's teeth. Left in HH's typewriter is a passage about what a
sucky artist Steven is. Steven gets questioned and is suspected probably
because of some incident where he threatened to wring HH's neck earlier in the
evening over his bad reviews. Joan alibis him up, but the cop isn't
convinced. Soon, the cops figure out that he wasn't with Joan and it turns out
that he was partying into the wee hours in the morning with a bunch of other
artist friends who were celebrating the death of Harmon. This cop guy
continues to sniff around, chiefly because of the pin-up model in the
skimpy-for-1946 outfit that Steven is using for his latest masterpiece. For
some reason the cop is bound and determined to pin it on the pin-up king. He
arranges with some other newspaper guy to bait a trap for Steven. It goes like
this: Newspaper guy will write mean column about Steven. Newspaper guy will
then wait in his house until Steven shows up to kill him. This admittedly
ingenious plan goes off without a hitch and the cops even manage to catch
Steven trying to wring his neck (is this for real?), but the plan goes awry
because the newspaper guy wrote in his column that Steven stunk just like this
sculptor named Marcel. Oops! Now, even though Marcel and Rondo don't have
enough money to eat, they're still out buying the local paper and reading the
arts and leisure pages, because Marcel sees this and gets his dander up and
Rondo (who spends his time playing with a wad of clay) goes into action and
kills the newspaper guy while the cops and Steven are in the other room.
Convinced that Steven is only an attempted murderer and not the Creeper, they
let him go and now Joan starts sniffing around Marcel for a story. I'm not
sure exactly why since everyone knows that Marcel is a sucky sculptor and
surely NYC has bigger art stories than "Sucky Sculptor Goes Hungry, Whines
Incessantly." Even though Joan is an art critic, she's really a nosy reporter at heart. How
else to explain the fact that she sees a sketch that Marcel has done of Rondo
and steals it thinking that this would be a story her editors would want to
run: "Sucky Sculptor Sketches Picture Of Ugly Guy." Rondo is hiding while she
does this and he tattles to Marcel on her. Marcel realizes that someone might
realize that his ugly guy sketch may be noticed as the same as the ugly guy
wanted poster in the paper, so he sends Rondo after her. Somehow Rondo ends up
at Steven's place and kills the pin up model. Meanwhile, Joan comes back to
see Marcel about the story and he traps her there, saying that no one has
anything on him and that he would just tell the cops that it was all Rondo's
fault. Once again, Rondo is in hiding and manages to hear Marcel's intention
to betray him. Rondo appears and re-sculpts Marcel's back, then he goes after
Joan. It is a suspense-filled scene where Rondo and her stare at each other
between some shelving before he just decides to pin her against the wall with
it. Steven shows up and can't get in the door because it's locked and he's
unable to break it down (that's an artist for you), then the cop who was hitting
on the dead pin-up model shows up somehow as well and shoots Rondo in the back.
The movie benefits from the fact that the video box threatened an hour and 16
minute running time, but the movie itself only clocked in at 66 minutes. Who
stole my extra ten minutes of Creeper mayhem? Better than the next Creeper
flick, mainly because Marcel was the lead villain and not Rondo. You also
didn't have to put up with such idiotic situations as the tired old blind
girl/ugly guy stuff and that whole secret origin involving a chemistry accident
at college. House Of Horrors gets a little credit for trying to build a story
that has more to do than just Rondo running around snapping spines, but
unfortunately we get the old tale of the artist getting revenge on his critics.
That's okay, but what is the deal with the Creeper? Just because he got
pulled out of the water and saved by this guy, he feels obligated to kill on
his behalf? Why did he kill the hooker? Marcel didn't want him to do that.
Why doesn't he go kill people with money so that he and Marcel can enjoy a
better standard of living. Another problem is the utter lack of information
about who the Creeper is and why is he like he is. Since all that information
would be revealed to a breathless world the next year in The Brute Man, anyone who went to this movie must have been thinking "what is going on
here?"
It's like you're just plopped into the last third of a story (killer found, not
dead, goes on another rampage, gets shot). How is anyone supposed to care
enough to bother with this one since there is nothing compelling about the
Creeper as he is presented here? There's no motivation attributed to the
Creeper, no reason for his fury and rage. Rondo doesn't do anyone any favors
with his part in all this either.
The movie relies on Rondo's looks (or lack thereof)
to define their monster, but in doing so they sacrifice any depth in his
character that would have made this film more than the forgettable "killer on
the loose" movie it was. You have to lay the blame at Rondo's lumpy feet,
because he just has no ability on the screen. He can't even communicate any
emotion with his face, like other lumbering monsters might be able to. He just
looks sullen and like he doesn't even know why he's there. Martin Kosleck who
played Marcel is the only one in the movie that is believable, and his
performance is probably the only thing worth mentioning about this movie. Yes,
he sounds like Jean-Claude Van Damme, but his obsessed and crazed sculptor is
fairly unsettling and makes for a bad guy that is much scarier than anything
Rondo can put up there on the screen. Well, anything except maybe just how bad
he is up there on the screen.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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