From thebloodshoteye.com:

Is it art?

That impossible question is unlikely to intrude upon the thoughts of many of those who spend 65 minutes (its entire runtime!) with "House of Horrors," a 1946 B-movie about a spine-snapping brute man known as "the Creeper."

Martin Kosleck (left) and Rondo Hatton in "House of Horrors."

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Even so, "House of Horrors" -- which recently made its DVD debut in the five-film "Universal Cult Horror Collection" box set -- can be grouped with Roger Corman's "A Bucket of Blood" and "Theater of Blood" with Vincent Price as the rare horror movie about art and the process of making art, from inspiration to realization to recognition. "Those who do not appreciate true art will probably call it ugly," rationalizes the film's mad sculptor about his work -- a useful comment that could function as an inadvertent slogan for all the undervalued directors laboring in the sometimes disreputable horror genre.

"House of Horrors" typically is dismissed even by horror historians as little more than the dubious high point in the sad but compelling acting career of Rondo Hatton, a victim of the pituitary malfunction known as acromegaly (reportedly caused by his exposure to poison gas during World War I).

Hatton's grotesquely swollen features made him the first Universal "monster" who didn't require makeup. He initially found work in Hollywood as a bit player; he was used as a piece of living set dressing in such films as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) and "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943). But in 1944, Universal cast Hatton as the mute and murderous "Hoxton Creeper" in the Sherlock Holmes film, "Pearl of Death," and a mon-star was born.

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