Is House Of Horrors A Sequel To Sherlock Holmes Film Pearl Of Death?
House Of Horrors shares an obvious connection with The Pearl Of Death, but is it a true sequel to the Sherlock Holmes movie? Long before Sherlock was played by Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey Jr., 20th Century Fox and Universal made a series of films from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s starring Basil Rathbone as the iconic detective. One of those movies was 1941's The Pearl Of Death, which was directed by Roy William Neill.
The film follows Sherlock Holmes and his dear Watson as they investigate a link between a series of brutal murders and the theft of a priceless pearl from a London museum. The intrepid duo discovers that master criminal Giles Conover (Miles Mander) is behind the heist but lost track of the precious pearl after fleeing through a workshop pumping out identical busts of Napoleon and hiding his spoils in one of them. To track down his treasure, Conover hired a brutishly strong goon known as “The Creeper” (Rondo Hatton, an actor afflicted with acromegaly) to kill everyone who came into possession of the Napoleon busts but thanks to Sherlock and Watson their machinations were unveiled and neither villain made it out of The Pearl Of Death alive.
Despite “The Creeper’s” apparent demise in The Pearl Of Death, a suspiciously similar character turned up in 1946 Universal Pictures horror film House Of Horrors. The movie focuses on a struggling sculptor named Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck) who rescues a man dubbed “The Creeper” (again played by Rondo Hatton) from drowning and makes him the subject of his latest work. When his sculpture receives bad reviews, De Lange directs “The Creeper” to kill his critics. Obviously, The Pearl Of Death and House Of Horrors share a secondary antagonist in the form of Rondo Hatton’s “Creeper” character but that doesn’t necessarily mean House Of Horrors is a true sequel to the Sherlock Holmes movie The Pearl Of Death either.
The truth is that Universal Pictures saw the commercial potential of casting star Rondo Hatton in more mystery and horror movies and planned a film series featuring the actor in his “Creeper” role. After House Of Horrors, Rondo Hatton reprised the role once again in the 1946 horror thriller The Brute Man in which “The Creeper” goes on a murder spree, killing off those he deems responsible for his facial disfigurements. Despite featuring the same character, the three films in which Hatton plays “The Creeper” aren’t really related in terms of story, although House Of Horrors could be considered a quasi or spiritual sequel to The Pearl Of Death and some have described The Brute Man as a quasi-prequel to House Of Horrors.
Sadly, Rondo Hatton died before House Of Horrors and The Brute Man were released so no more films featuring “The Creeper” were made, but some eagle-eyed fans of Sherlock Holmes believe a later tale about the detective paid tribute to the actor and his character. In the modern day-set BBC series Sherlock (which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular P.I.), a season 1 episode titled “The Great Game” features a brutishly strong, hulking murderer known as “The Golem” who bears a strong resemblance to Hatton’s “Creeper.”
Source: Screenrant
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