"...And introducing Rondo Hatton as the Creeper" reads the screen credit in House of Horrors--an exceedingly odd screen credit at that. This wasn't Rondo Hatton's first film--he'd been acting in films, mostly playing thugs of one sort or another, for the previous decade and a half. It wasn't even Hatton's first appearance as the Creeper--that came in 1944's Pearl of Death, in which Hatton's Creeper menaced Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.
But House of Horrors was, in fact, Hatton's first starring role in an unlikely movie career that began and continued because he developed acromegaly, a disease of the pituitary gland that enlarges and distorts the extremities. For Hatton, this meant having an unforgettable face that didn't need layers of makeup to be frightening.
Hatton stalked across the screen in several films for Universal from 1944 to 1946, always as a homicidal maniac of one kind or another. (As the Creeper, he was fond of snapping his victim's spines.) Though he wasn't terribly tall--in House of Horrors, he appears to be not much taller than his female costars--and wore a padded costume to make his look bulkier than he really was, his heavily browed face and large, muscular-looking hands gave him a threatening appearance that appealed to Universal--at least until Universal was bought out and the new management found the exploitation of Hatton's disease to be tasteless. (The studio passed off Hatton's last film, The Brute Man--a prequel of sorts to House of Horrors--to Poverty Row outfit PRC for release.)
Unfortunately for Hatton, acromegaly also meant that he couldn't enjoy his fame and popularity for very long. Not long after House of Horror premiered in 1946, Hatton died from a heart attack directly related to his disease at the age of 51. The Brute Man wasn't released until October 1, 1946, nearly 8 months after Hatton's passing.
2 comments:
Fascinating! I knew nothing about this man's personal life before now. On the one hand, it's a sad story because he developed a disease that disfigured him and eventually caused his early death. On the other hand, he was able to make a living and gain some celebrity at a time when such stories were nearly unheard of. Now, more than 60 years later, he's still known.
And has his own action figure!
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