SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

calvinnme This was a B film made by Universal but sold to poverty row outfit PRC for distribution, and there are no big names here and no big budget, but it is very poignant for several reasons, which I will get into later.This is basically a 20th century Frankenstein story. Someone is going around murdering people with his bare hands - "The Creeper" as he is called by the newspapers and the police. The audience sees the murderer from the beginning, and none of the murders seem premeditated. It is initially a deformed man with monstrous strength apparently visiting people he knew before, and when they become afraid or try to scream or run, he kills them in anger. The police almost catch "The Creeper" after the second murder, but he climbs up a fire escape and into the apartment window of a girl playing a piano. The girl seems unafraid of him and when she asks him if he is in trouble followed by knocking on her door, she hides the man and tells the police that she has seen nor heard anything strange. However, the police never identified themselves, and later you can hear running, yelling, and shooting nearby. If The Creeper is in her apartment who exactly are the police shooting at? But I digress. The Creeper learns the girl is blind, cannot see his ugliness and is therefore friendly, plus she didn't know it was the police at the door, because they never said who they were. Like the Frankenstein monster, in a blind person The Creeper has found a friend.Meanwhile the police have connected the first two victims and go to visit two people who were connected to them 15 years before in college and who are now married and doing well for themselves. They tell a tale of a popular athlete, Hal Moffat, who was tutored in chemistry by the husband, but when Hal got a little too friendly with his girl - now his wife - the tutor gave the jock the wrong answers to questions for an oral exam the next day. As a result, Hal failed the oral test and was given a long complicated chemistry experiment to do as remedial makeup work. Always having a bad temper, and realizing he had been deliberately tricked, Hal threw the test tubes to the ground, but the liquid splashed on his face. In the hospital, the doctor told his friends that Hal's features would be deformed, and that even his glands, which effect how features are formed and how bones grow, would be effected.So we have a blind girl who needs money for an operation to restore her sight, a bitter homicidal man who knows that the couple who betrayed him years ago are doing well financially, and who also tends to take violent revenge on anybody who crosses him, and the police who now know who the murderer is, they just have no idea how and where he is living and what he looks like. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out. The poignant part of this is how art so imitated the life of the man who plays "The Creeper", Rondo Hatton. Mr. Hatton was also a popular athlete during high school who was injured by poison gas during his service in WWI. That chemical exposure later caused acromegaly, a slowly progressive deforming of bones in the head, hands and feet, and internal and external soft tissues caused by disease of the pituitary gland. The deformity, which was progressive, broke up his first marriage. He did, however, marry a second time. So it may be that the low rating is from people who do not like the fact that Universal, who had a contract with Mr. Hatton, used his deformity to exploit him in such roles. However, I think his performance was pretty good. After all, there is no time for real dramatic depth in these old B films. I'd recommend it as a well done modern horror film.

utgard14 One of the later and weaker Universal horror films. The story is about a disfigured man (Rondo Hatton) who blames two old friends (Tom Neal, Jan Wiley) for an accident that caused him to look the way he does. So he takes his revenge by killing a bunch of people. He also befriends a blind lady (Jane Adams). Honestly, the movie has about fifteen minutes of story that it pads out to almost an hour. Universal disowned it and sold it off to the illustrious PRC for distribution. Hatton's performance isn't very good but given his deteriorating condition it's not surprising. He died not long after this was finished. The best performance comes from the always entertaining Donald MacBride as the police captain out to solve the case. Universal horror buffs will possibly enjoy it more than most. One minor note of interest for Universal or Hatton fans: despite films usually trying to portray Hatton as a hulking giant, here we see him standing opposite Adams and Wiley and it's clear that he wasn't even six feet tall.

Scarecrow-88 Solid chiller, capitalizing on the popularity of Rondo Hatton's creeper character made popular in the Sherlock Holmes classic, "The Pearl of Death", has The Creeper on the rampage breaking the backs of those he deems responsible for his facial abnormalities, which occurred when a college rival infuriates his temper (both were affectionate for a beauty in their same graduation class) causing a mishap in the chemistry lab. The police have a city-wide manhunt in place, with lots of pressure on Captain MJ Donelly (Donald MacBride) to find The Creeper with the public in a state of panic, the psychopath a media sensation, making all the headlines. The police continue to have a black eye with the city mayor becoming more and more frustrated the longer The Creeper remains at large and not arrested. The possible key to The Creeper's capture is his utter hatred for the former rival, Clifford Scott (Tom Neal) and his wife, Virginia (Jan Wiley), the two he especially holds responsible for his ugly facial scars. Hatton's Hal Moffet was once a rising football star and Clifford was his scholarly tutor, both in love with Virginia. However, Clifford was the man she was in love with and the nerd made sure Hal got placed in the lab thanks to a failing grade. Jane Adams (the lovely hunchback nurse who met a gruesome fate in "House of Dracula") has a crucial role in the potential apprehension of The Creeper as a blind piano instructor he falls in love with (she cannot see his face, therefore does not frighten at his hideous visage). The Creeper wants her to get an eye operation and will try to finagle money from Clifford, with problems ensuing…Like other movies in the same vein, "The Brute Man" sympathizes with a beastly man suffering from the unpleasantness of fate, whether it is a hunched back, ugliness in appearance, or some other bodily malformation that horrifies "normal society". While acknowledging his crimes and not making excuses for them, this film still empathizes with Hatton's grotesque features (not exactly a comment directly from me, but just in the way movies imply how unpleasant he looks), and having him befriending a kindly blind woman who probably would not judge his looks if she had sight just further elaborates a sense of mourning for his predicament, asking us to at least invest emotionally in the way society cringes at his presence, screaming out instead of simply listening to him before doing so. Still, he kills a woman who cries out because she feels threatened and a teenage grocery courier, so Hal isn't a completely sympathetic figure; he's a bonafide killer who needs to be taken off the streets. This movie definitely has the look and feel of a Universal Studios release, with Hatton's involvement a major factor in its appeal to fans of classic horror. Not deserved of such a low rating, I think "The Brute Man" is worthy of discovery.It is so tragic that Hatton did not live long enough to see how much people enjoyed his brief work in the movies--yes, his condition was exploited in a manner that turned him into almost a sideshow, but I think "The Brute Man" establishes that the actor could in fact earn pathos instead of just walking around as a hulking brute destroying people.

JoeKarlosi Rondo Hatton (who suffered from the disease Acromegaly) allowed himself to be exploited by Universal Pictures near the end of his life for some horror-themed movies. Here in his final film he plays the deformed murderer named "The Creeper" for the last time, who is on the prowl and hunted down by the police. He seeks refuge in the home of a pretty blind pianist (Jane Adams from HOUSE OF Dracula). If there is one film from this period that I'd call "only pretty standard stuff", it would be this one. But at least there is a flashback sequence which offers a semi-interesting slant on how the Creeper came by his unfortunate appearance. ** out of ****