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In the 1940s, Rondo Hatton was on the rise as a star in horror movies,
owed mainly to his face distorted by acromegaly, a result most possibly of
a poison gas attack during his deployment in France in World War I. The
first film that fully exploited his natural creepy looks was the Sherlock
Holmes movie Pearl of
Death, soon to be followed by The
Spider Woman Strikes Back, House of Horrors and The
Brute Man, among others. He died in 1946 of a heart attack, aged
51, a direct result of his acromegaly. Robert A. Burns was only born lm
1944, and it's safe to say the two men have never met. Robert grew up to
become an art director on horror classics like The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
Hills Have Eyes, The Howling
and Re-Animator, as well as
fun obscurities like Tourist Trap and Microwave Massacre.
And he even took a lead role in the 1985 movie Confessions of a Serial
Killer. Now other than the fact that the two men are probably
under-appreciated heroes of the horror genre, they have little in common,
Robert A. Burns looked as "normal" as Rondo Hatton looked
creepy, and while Burns had a somewhat bizarre and macabre imagination
that often creeped out others, Hatton according to all accounts was the
most likeable person off-screen. Burns though was the authority on Rondo
Hatton, having researched the man's life and career extensively in his
early years, up to the point where he tracked down and became friends with
Hatton's widow. And through this fascination, Hatton and Burns' life
stories, even if separated by decades, are told as parallel timelines, up
to their respective tragic deaths ... Now this is quite a
fascinating documentary, first and foremost of course for horror fans, but
its approach makes it also very engaging to a larger audience, as the film
doesn't purely rely on talking head testimonies, but also on a plethora of
film clips from classic and not so classic movies, plus extended
re-enactments of key scenes of both men's lives, with Robert A. Burns
played by Ryan Williams, Rondo Hatton by Joseph Middleton, and Hatton's
wife/widow Mae, the link between the two men, by Kelsey Pribilski. And
even if it can be argued the film may have taken some artistic licence
with some of the scenes, it's only to further the story, not distort the
facts. And the result is a highly entertaining documentary that really
ticks all the right boxes.
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