The Brute Man

And now, the DVD technical review
Another customer review very nicely covers the movie itself, so just let me chime in with a few quick words about the technical quality of the DVD release.

You might think that this disc would be grainy, or soft, or with poor contrast, particularly since it's from the legendary poverty row studio PRC, and a few other PRC videos are so-so. Truth is, although the film was released by PRC, it was produced by Universal Studios!

You'll be exceedingly happy to discover that the transfer to DVD is outstanding. Contrast is excellent, and the image is sharp and clean. This is a Criterion-level transfer here! Sound is nice and clean too. Of course, the disc hasn't anything in the way of extras. Running time is just about an hour, the case is a snapper.

If you're interested in the related films, this one is the last of the "Creeper" films. The Creeper is Rondo Hatton's "signature role" begun in 1944 in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes film PEARL OF DEATH,...

Below-par B thriller of historical interest only
The Brute Man was the last film of Rondo Hatton, an acromagly sufferer whose disfigured looks were exploited by Hollywood in a series of movies in which he played a psychopathic back-breaker called The Creeper (although none of the movies, including the Sherlock Holmes thriller Pearl of Death, has any link and were not part of any series).

This cheap PRC production has Hatton hunt down the people responsible for his disfigurement (an explosion in his college lab) and also murder various others who get in his way. The victims include a nosy shop assistant and a jeweller who insists that Hatton pay for a broach. Meantime, he falls in love with a blind woman but she eventually betrays him to the police and he tries to kill her too.

One of the amusing things about this movie is that there's supposed to be a huge Dragnet out for Hatton but he's always walking down the street openly despite his looks and appearance. He actually doesn't give a bad performance. Deapite his...

"I've changed a little since I last saw you."
I first became familiar with the character `The Creeper' after seeing a likeness of him in the 1991 film The Rocketeer, as special effects man Rick Baker transformed actor `Tiny' Ron Taylor into the character of Lothar, an incredible likeness of Rondo Hatton, who played the character (sans any prosthetics) in the late 1930s and through the 1940s, up until his death in 1946 at the age of about 52. Seems Hatton, once a handsome looking man (according to reports), suffered from a case of acromegaly, which resulted in a form of gigantism deforming his head, feet and hands to enormous proportions. Hatton's last film, The Brute Man (1946), directed by Jean Yarbrough (She-Wolf of London, Hillbillys in a Haunted House), features Tom Neal (Another Thin Man, Detour), Jan Wiley (She-Wolf of London), and Jane Adams (House of Dracula). Also appearing is Donald MacBride (My Favorite Wife, High Sierra, The Thin Man Goes Home), Peter Whitney (Destination Tokyo), Fred Coby (Devil's Cargo), and...

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