Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Admirable film.

A man crawls out of the Hudson River as another man contemplates jumping in. Seeing the face of the man crawling up, the suicidal man is inspired for his greatest work of art. Meanwhile, rumors of a serial killer named "the creeper" continue to travel as a prostitute is found with her spine snapped. A friendship of sorts grows between the two men. The artist is Martin Kosleck whose work has been panned by a snooty critic. The other is Rondo Hatton, a simple man of hideous looks and brutal strength who is quickly revealed to be "the creeper", and a tool of the vindictive Kosleck.One of the best later B Universal horror films, this is extremely well plotted, suspenseful and features a way above average script. Kosleck and Hatton are sort of the poor man's Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, with Kosleck getting more and more insane, and the pathetic Hatton sort of sympathetic for the child like hurt he feels for society's rejection for his "ugliness". Robert Lowery and Virginia Grey are feisty as an artist and model who are suspects in the critic's murder; Alan Napier, aka " Alfred the Butler" in the "Batman" series is the nasty critic who finds his snappy words the key to his separated spine, with Virginia Christine, the "Folger's" lady, as Hatton's first on screen victim.There's also a bit of comic relief with Bill Goodwin as the wise-cracking detective. Often, the mixture of horror and comedy is either ridiculously silly, an ingenious spoof, or off center in its Jekyll and Hyde personality. This is one film where it all works, causing me to highly praise it as being an excellent example of B films at their best.

Struggling artist (Martin Kosleck) intends to kill himself but winds up saving the life of serial killer The Creeper (Rondo Hatton) instead. Afterwards, he sends The Creeper out to murder his critics. When another artist (Robert Lowery) is suspected of being the killer, his girlfriend (Virginia Grey) investigates and finds the clues lead to Kosleck and The Creeper. Nice cast, weak script. Alan Napier is fun as one of the critics. This is one of the lesser Universal horror films made at the end of their second horror cycle. It's mainly of interest for Universal completists and those interested in the disfigured Hatton. It's certainly better than Hatton's next (and last) movie, Brute Man.

House of Horrors (1946) ** (out of 4) Silly horror flick from Universal has artist Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck) growing tired of the negative reviews from critics so he goes to kill himself but before he can do so he pulls a drowning man out of the river. This man gives the artist his inspiration for his masterpiece but what he doesn't know is that the man he saved is the notorious serial killer known as The Creeper (Rondo Hatton). Soon the critic is sending The Creeper out to kill those who insult his work. I've said it before but I've always found it rather troublesome and unsettling that Universal would use the tragic accident surrounding Hatton and turn it into some freak show exploitation. Thankfully the exploitation here isn't nearly as high as some of the others films he was in but there's very little to recommend here outside of the performances. Many would argue that these later day Universal films became way too childish but I'm somewhat certain a child wrote the dialogue in this film because it's downright horrid and the absolute worst I've ever heard from a Universal picture. The opening bit with the artist giving a "deep" talk to his cat about hunting mice and hunting clients was downright hilariously bad. This is followed up with an even dumber sequence where a possible client brings over a famous art critic who then tears into the artist. For starters, why on Earth would a famous art critic waste his time going with a nobody to see the art of a nobody? Also, would such an educated man use the childish name-calling that this guy does? The screenplay not only features horrible dialogue but we get several plot goofs including one where a suspect says he couldn't have killed one of the critics. The cop then agrees because the artist was in a bar with fellow artists when they got word that the critic was murdered at two am. This goes against the previous scene where it's said that the critics body wasn't discovered under 11am. Yarbrough's direction is hard to spot as there's not an inch of energy to be found and everything just comes off rather lazy. Both Hatton and Kosleck are good in their roles as is Robert Lowery and Virginia Grey as a artist and critic and then we get a good turn by Bill Goodwin as the cop investigating the crimes. HOUSE OF HORRORS was somewhat done again years later by Vincent Price in THEATRE OF BLOOD and that's certainly the film to see.

HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946) comes at the very tail end of Universal's classic horror film cycle, following on the heels of 1930s box office blockbusters like Dracula, FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN and THE BLACK CAT. By the 1940s, however, the studio's established monsters had been relegated to a succession of sequels with mixed and varying results. Ultimately, as budgets shrank and the big stars like Karloff and Lugosi drifted off to other studios, Universal began producing very low budget (although generally very entertaining) B horror melodramas such as CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, THE MAD GHOUL, and, most notoriously, HOUSE OF HORRORS. For many, this film was particularly repellent because its star, Rondo Hatton, suffered from a horribly disfiguring and ultimately degenerative disease called acromegaly. He appeared in a small number of cheap-jack horror thrillers, HOUSE OF HORRORS definitely being the best of the lot. In it he (again) appears as The Creeper, a deformed, deranged killer thought to have drowned in the East River after a police manhunt. He is, however, rescued by a suicidal sculptor named Marcel De Lange (wonderfully played by Martin Kosleck) who spots him in the river just as De Lange is about to take his own life. He brings the monster back to his skid row studio where he not only nurses him back to life but develops a strange, impenetrable bond with him. This bond extends itself into killing off a number of art critics (as well as sexy streetwalkers and models) who have denounced De Lange as a fraudulent disgrace to the art world by first strangling them then snapping their spines. Ultimately The Creeper and De Lange are outwitted and brought down by a girl newspaper columnist (Virginia Grey) and her pin-up artist boyfriend (Robert Lowery). A dim-witted cop (Bill Goodwin) provides little help at all. Despite the rather dismal reputation this film has, it is nonetheless an effectively atmospheric and peculiarly disturbing story, perhaps most accurately described as horror noir. Put aside whatever reservations you may have about this bizarre oddity and check it out.