Review of The Creeper

Note: This contains a *SPOILER*!! This minor item comes from the late 1940's, a lull period in fantastic cinema. The golden age of horror films had ended in mid 1946 when studios (for a host of reasons) had pretty much stopped cranking out fantastic thrillers, and the science fiction boom of the 1950's, which began with the release of DESTINATION MOON in 1950, had not yet begun. Almost all of the sparse handful of fantastic thrillers made during this period were minor items from minor studios. THE CREEPER is no exception. THE CREEPER is about mad scientist who experiments with serum derived from cats that turns him into cat like killer (a werecat?). The film opens well, with a rather atmospheric opening. However, only after a few minutes the film sinks to the perfunctory. Despite the visually interesting opening sequence the film looks dull and flat. Onslow Stevens laboratory is just a desk and table with a few beakers and test tubes. The lab for the rival scientists down the hall is even more drab looking. Most scenes begin or open with people leaving or entering rooms. As far as the story goes, I knew right from the beginning that Eduardo Ciannelli was not the killer but a red herring. I suspect the makers of this film realized there was still an audience for these kinds of thrills and since almost nobody else was making this kind of film, they figured they could make a film that just had to be "good enough". Audiences who went for this kind of stuff were not being catered to, so they were willing to sit through even a perfunctory thriller such as this.