The Brute Man

The Brute Man is a 1946 American film noir horror thriller film starring Rondo Hatton as the Creeper, a murderer seeking revenge against the people he holds responsible for the disfigurement of his face. Directed by Jean Yarbrough, the film features Tom Neal and Jan Wiley as a married pair of friends the Creeper blames for his deformities. Jane Adams also starred as a blind pianist for whom the Creeper tries to raise money for an operation to restore her vision. The film was produced by Universal Pictures near the end of their horror film period. According to legend, as the result of its pending merger with International Pictures, Universal Pictures adopted a policy against releasing any more B movies, so sold The Brute Man for $125,000 to poverty row's Producers Releasing Corporation, which distributed the film without any mention of Universal's involvement in publicity or credits. In fact, Universal released at least one B-western following the merger, and still had numerous other titles in active circulation from the preceding few years, at the time of the merger. Most experts tend to believe that Universal simply found the exploitation of the deceased Hatton and his deformity for the third time, in his last film (in which evidence of his impending demise may be foreshadowed in his acting), and of a poorly-developed story, to be detrimental to its corporate image but did not want to take a financial loss by simply shelving the film permanently. Considered a lost film after its initial release, because it was neither reissued theatrically by Madison Pictures, inheritor of the PRC library of films, nor sent to television by Universal, it was eventually relocated for television by TNT and subsequently released to home video in 1982. The Brute Man received generally negative reviews, drawing particular criticism for Hatton's poor performance. The film was featured in a 1996 episode of the movie-mocking comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000.