In the horror movie heyday of Universal Pictures, he made the studio backlot his own personal prey-ground: Rondo Hatton, star of the company’s “Creeper” series.
The victim of a disfiguring disease, Hatton needed no makeup to play the Creeper, a night-prowling vertebrae-ker, in The Pearl of Death (1944), House of Horrors (1946) and The Brute Man (1946).
A lot of misery and physical pain were packed into Rondo Hatton’s 51 years on Earth, and he met his challenges with courage. This book tells Hatton’s full story and pays tribute with a full biography, the production histories of his five horror movies, artist George Chastain’s tribute to other “Brute Men” of the movies, artwork (and an afterword) by celebrated pop culture cartoonist Drew Friedman and more.
Also: Rondo’s miraculous 21st-century “rebirth” as a coveted award for the finest in Monster Kid achievement: the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. (Scary Monsters won the Rondo Award for Best Classic Magazine 2017-2022.)
Brand-new and uncirculated. Copyright 2019 Tom Weaver. Published by BearManor Media, Oct. 31, 2019. Color cover, B&W 206 pp.
