The Brute Man (1946)

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.

This film is not all that bad - it's certainly better than it's rating. Why this film is rated so badly I'll never know. I'll admit there are better dramatic thrillers of the 1940s but this one deserves a better rating than it's getting.Rondo Hatton plays Hal Moffat AKA 'The Creeper' - he's well suited for this role. The only thing I wish is that they had maybe scared or disfigured his real face more - because that is what is suppose to have happened to Hal (had his face disfigured).Jane Adams is Helen Paige - and she's good. I really enjoyed her in this film as well as House of Dracula (1945).This one is a good watch. It's not a "must see" film but it is a film that is enjoyable for certain audiences.6.5/10

Yes, the character in this film is played by Rondo Hatton and his name is Hal Moffat who is known as The Creeper and the title of the film is The Brute Man! If I had to guess, I would say there is perhaps another film named The Creeper released about this time; otherwise, why name the film The Brute Man? He is never referred to as the brute man at any point during the duration of the film. I saw this film on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I would think that it is probably one of the older films that they have riffed over the years. It was not as bad as a lot of other films they did, just a very uneven tone in it and I think it would have played out better had they not made the creeper, the brute man such a killer in the film. Or if they had simply not tried to illicit sympathy for him it would have helped.The story has a man going through the city killing people. He is dubbed The Creeper and there is a huge manhunt going on for this person as he kills a woman and an intrepid delivery boy who would have probably been better off minding his own business or simply tipping off the police rather than overly long staring through a window. This disfigured killer though has a sweet spot for a blind woman as she does not fear him because of his looks. Still, the creeper will not stop his plans for revenge even for love! Heck, he even kills a shopkeeper for the blind girl.This made for a rather good episode of MST3K it also featured a short preceding the film about the chicken of tomorrow that is also rather funny. I preferred the shorts like it to the serials that they did in earlier episodes, mainly because you never got any resolution! The police in this film are rather goofy, the brute man actually being dubbed the creeper in the film and other things make this film full of good riffs and it does not hurt that this film was not horrible or boring too.This film does have its moments as it is interesting watching the creeper getting revenge and at the same time trying to woo the lady, but as I said it makes the film uneven. Like they were trying to go for horror and then added drama and then threw in a dash of light comedy and then tried to mix it all up! There are also a lot of scenes of the creeper simply trying to climb a fire escape, I can think of three times easy! So if you like revenge, if you like brute men who are known by creeper and you like watching people climb fire escapes this is the film for you! Also, how did the creeper get over being shot twice at point blank range?

Earlier on during this Halloween Horror challenge, I had watched HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946) which was basically a precursor to this one – similarly dealing with a hulking criminal with a penchant for back-breaking dubbed "The Creeper" (actually first seen in the Sherlock Holmes mystery THE PEARL OF DEATH [1944]!). In this case, we are given the character's tragic back-story – though it actually does a disservice to actor Rondo Hatton (deformed in real life by acromegaly) by making his condition self-inflicted and rendering him homicidal into the bargain! Anyway, though it shares many a credit with the subsequent film, this one (which proved to be Hatton's last) was actually made by the Poverty Row company PRC. Running a brief 59 minutes, it is simply a succession of incidents showing The Creeper either taking revenge on his former colleagues at college (including an ex-girlfriend and a romantic rival – played by DETOUR [1945]'s Tom Neal) or else killing others who happen to get in his way. To give some measure of sympathy to the titular figure, we also get a subplot in which he is sheltered by a blind pianist (shades of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN [1935] and THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK [1941]): eventually, though, she allows herself to be used as bait in a trap set for him by the Police (with flustered Donald MacBride at their head!). In itself, then, the film is watchable as an example of low-budget horror from this vintage but in no way a classic.