The Brute Man is a 1946 American 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.

Universal may have concluded that the exploitation of Hatton's deformity for the third time (in which evidence of his impending demise may be foreshadowed in his acting) to be detrimental to its corporate image, but did not want to take a financial loss by simply shelving the film.

The cantankerous store owner Mr. Haskins arrives with a handwritten letter slipped under the door, requesting groceries be delivered to a nearby dock.

Meanwhile, at the police station, Captain M.J. Donelly and Lieutenant Gates receive complaints from the mayor's office about their failure to arrest the Creeper, but they deflect the blame.

Donnelly also finds a newspaper clipping with a man named Hal Moffet and two of his friends, Clifford Scott and Virginia Rogers, during their college days.

[2] An author of pulp fiction stories and novels, Babock started writing for Universal Pictures in 1943, where he worked primarily on horror films.

[2] The Brute Man is a quasi-prequel to House of Horrors, in which Hatton played a deformed madman named "the Creeper" who kills people by breaking their backs.

[14][15][16] The film's setting, which appears to be a major city, is never identified in The Brute Man, but it has been suggested to be Manhattan, since that is where House of Horrors took place.

[3][13] City Lights, like The Brute Man, included a protagonist (Chaplin's Tramp character) who falls in love with a blind girl and seeks money for an operation to restore her eyesight.

[13] The Brute Man marked one of several films in which Universal cast Hatton as a murderer, taking advantage of his natural deformities for shock value.

[22] In The Brute Man, Neal portrayed Scott both in his older years and in the flashback scenes, where the character appears as a college student.

[23] However, her performance in The Brute Man proved to be a less than memorable one for her, so much so that in an interview shortly before Wiley's death in 1993, she could barely remember even having appeared in the film.

[17] The Brute Man was developed by Universal Pictures Company, Inc. in the later years of their successful production of horror films, including Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932).

[17] Jane Adams said Hatton's acromegaly was becoming progressively worse by the time The Brute Man was filmed, and it made acting difficult for him.

Other crew included Russell A. Gausman and Edward R. Robinson as set decorators, Joe Lapis as sound technician, Jack Pierce as make-up director, Carmen Dirigo as hair stylist, and Vera West as gowns supervisor.

This resulted in the firing of numerous production personnel members and the sale of several already-developed films, including The Brute Man.

[19][32] Universal feared releasing the film so soon after his death would lead to accusations that the studio was exploiting the illness that ultimately killed Hatton.

[3][17] The transaction occurred around August 1946, but was not made public until it was screened for the trade press on October 1, marking its official release date.

The sale occurred so quickly and hastily on the copyright files stores at the Library of Congress, the name Universal Pictures was crossed out and Pathe Industries, PRC's corporate body, was written in its place in pencil.

[3][33] PRC had previously produced a horror film about acromegaly called The Monster Maker (1944), in which a mad scientist injects human subjects with the disease as part of his experiments.

The fact that The Brute Man was a "re-imagining" of Hatton's private life, one not overburdened with good taste, could not have been missed by the unfortunate actor.

[25] A 1946 review in the Harrison's Reports trade journal, found that the film had some suspenseful moments and could be enjoyed by fans of the genre, but that the overall effect was "artificial and stagy".

The reviewer stated most audiences "will find it tiresome in plot and in treatment [...] in fact, some of the action and dialogue may provoke laughs, instead of serious response".

In a review published in 1947, Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News called it "a crude production [...] compiled of bits from various B thrillers".

[34] Decades after the film's release, retrospective reviews of The Brute Man were similarly negative, with many commentators criticizing the exploitation of Hatton's real-life acromegaly.

[7][13][31] John Stanley, host of the KTVU television show Creature Features, described it as a dull and "shoddy thriller", criticizing both the performances and the mood from the direction and photography.

Brown wrote that the Creeper character "blurs the boundary between human and animal on account of his grotesque, deformed features, but is natural and thus a figure of terror".

There are a couple shots where a few speckles pop up, but much of the time the image is clean, with deep blacks and sharp, finely graded contrasts".

[34] The Brute Man was featured in a seventh season episode of the satirical television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 alongside the industrial short The Chicken of Tomorrow.