The Brute Man (1946)

The Brute Man (1946) is an exploitation noir-style civic horror B-feature in which social fears of deformity seem to come alive in the rather blunt capitalisation of the medical misfortunes of Rondo Hatton, some time proto-horror star and former journalist who found a career in film due to his unique facial features, which were the result of acromegaly. Hatton headlined horror films with Universal Studios near the end of his life, earning him a reputation as a cult icon.

In The Brute Man, Hatton plays Hal Moffet. He’s a handsome college athlete disfigured by a chemistry lab accident. Raging at the friend he blames for his misfortune, he sets off on a killing spree. 

This neatly parallels Hatton’s real biography. He was once an athletic youth, but war and disease changed his body. 

Detour (1945)

Detour (1945) is high noir, low budget and endlessly fascinating.  Like many of Edgar G. Ulmer’s films Detour was shot in 6 days;  ‘Just visualise it,’ said Ulmer, ‘eighty set-ups a day.’  

It’s hard to visualise, but it sure is heroic.  Normally, this approach would produce a clunky and directionless mess, but occasionally as here, it can still produce a gem.  It's what they used to call a 'poverty row quicky', for the high-speed and low-expense of its production, and there is something about this format that really lets the subversive implications of noir rise to the surface.

Detour is a fatalistic road-movie featuring the broke, the dissatisfied and a spade of bad luck.  At heart it’s a tense anti-buddy relationship, between actors Tom Neal and Ann Savage.  It turns out that Detour is also many people's favourite noir, given how bleak and cheap and evil it is. It's twisted in a way that is hard to achieve these days, and what buffs call a 'low-rent masterpiece.'