(1946)
Overall: WOOF
One of the later horror works to be produced by Universal's B-unit until they switched gears to more science fiction movies in the 1950s, The Brute Man also features the final performance from character actor Rondo Hatton who succumbed to his acromegaly affliction eight months before the film's first screening. Universal actually portioned the movie off to Poverty Row company Producers Releasing Corporation for distribution, further distancing themselves from both a lackluster product and one that took questionable advantage of Hatton's physical deformity which was sensationalized in the actual story. Serving as a prequel of sorts to House of Horrors which also starred Hatton as "The Creeper" and was released earlier the same year, the results are unmistakably poor and suffer from an action-less script and a sad performance by Hatton who seems confused, in pain, and incapable of emoting throughout. Even by the shoddy standards that such movies had frequently deteriorated to by the mid 1940s, this one has no redeemable qualities and is as dull as it is uncomfortable to endure.
(1948)
Overall: WOOF
It takes a special kind of bad movie to be both stupid and boring and director Jean Yardbrough delivers just such a thing with The Creeper. A B-movie that is sorely lacking in imagination, it was distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox yet it has all of the hallmarks of Poverty Row genre crud rocks; no star power, no agency to the plot, and hardly any visual flourishes to even cement it as a horror film. There are a few hazy nightmare-esque sequences and we see a pair of hairy cat hands, but the fun stops there as the entirety of the movie is stagnant melodrama, uninteresting characters and their uninteresting squabbles, and buried underneath all of that, some semblance of another hackneyed mad scientist kind-of story. The women have it worst of all as poor Janis Wilson spends the whole movie annoying everyone (and the viewer) with her fear of felines and June Vincent just seems unreasonably crotchety towards her would-be love interest. It mercifully ends at the sixty-four minute mark, but anyone coming to the proceedings with expectations to be "creeped out", (judging by the title), will instead leave both angry and disappointed.
(1949)
Overall: MEH
The sixteenth Bowery Boys movie out of a staggering forty-eight of them and the second one to have a horror angle, Master Minds is notable for featuring Glenn Strange's final performance as a monster in a feature length film. They still do not let Strange deliver any dialog, at least in his actual voice since his brain is transplanted to Huntz Hall and visa versa, which allows for Hall to dub his dialog so that the six foot, four-inch character actor can nyuck it up more than he was usually allowed. A typical body-swap romp in this regard, it is a treat for old school monster movie fans to see Strange getting more to do than just hulk around while growling, (though he still does plenty of that as well), plus Alan Napier makes a fine, posh mad scientist and Skeleton Knaggs' gnarly mug is always a nice addition. As far as the Bowery Boys go, they are not as annoying as other Poverty Row comedy gangs, but they are not as funny as the household name ones from the era either. Still, they and the film in general have some innocent and doofy charm, plus the script also manages to shoehorn in Hall being granted premonition powers when he gets a tooth ache.
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