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As impoverished Greenwich Village artist Marcel de Lange is about to sell one of his sculptures to a wealthy man named Samuels, vitriolic art critic F. Holmes Harmon denounces the piece as "tripe," scaring off Samuels.  Despondent and broke, Marcel walks to a bridge, intent on suicide.  When he notices a man struggling at the river's edge, however, he rushes to the rescue.  Marcel drags the man from the water and, awestruck by his hulking, hideous appearance, takes him home.

The next morning, the newly inspired Marcel asks his grateful guest if he will pose for a bust, and the surprised man agrees.  Soon after Marcel begins work on the bust, the man slips out and brutally kills a prostitute.  When the coroner reveals that the woman's spine was broken, homicide detective Lieutenant Larry Brooks comments that the murderer's methods resemble those of The Creeper, a notorious serial killer who escaped a dragnet by diving into the river and was presumed drowned.

Later, Marcel reads a newspaper account of the woman's murder and, realizing that his guest is The Creeper, declares that Harmon deserves to die for the terrible things he has written about him.  At Harmon's newspaper office, meanwhile, fellow art critic Joan Medford tries unsuccessfully to convince Harmon not to print a scathing review of her boyfriend Steven Morrow's new art show.

As soon as Joan leaves Harmon's office, The Creeper appears and murders the critic.  Aware that Steven had fought with Harmon, Larry questions him at his studio, but Joan provides Steven with a false alibi.  Looking for a story, Joan then visits Marcel, but he refuses to show her his half-finished bust of The Creeper.  While Marcel is in another room, however, Joan peeks at the bust, unaware that The Creeper is watching her from a hiding place.

Later, Larry, who now knows that Joan lied about Steven's alibi, asks Harmon's rival critic, Hal Ormiston, to help bait Steven by writing a searing review of his show.  When Steven reads the review, in which Ormiston snidely compares his work to Marcel's, he goes to confront Ormiston at his apartment.  Steven rails against Ormiston and grabs him when he starts to call the police.  At that moment, Larry bursts in the room and stops Steven.  Larry believes he has caught the killer until, a few moments later, he discovers Ormiston dead in the kitchen, his spine broken.  Unknown to Larry, The Creeper snuck into Ormiston's apartment and killed the critic because Marcel, having also read the review, was upset.

With Ormiston's murder, the newspapers announce that The Creeper is alive and print a sketch of his distinctive face.  Determined to get her story, Joan returns to Marcel's and steals his sketch of the bust, which he has signed.  Then, not having seen the drawing of The Creeper in the newspaper, she instructs her printer to publish a copy of it.  After completing her article, Joan telephones Steven and tells him that she is sneaking the original back to Marcel's.  The Creeper, meanwhile, informs Marcel that he saw Joan take the sketch, and Marcel, worried that she now knows the identity of the bust's model, sends The Creeper to kill her at Steven's, where he believes she has gone.  Instead, The Creeper murders Stella, one of Steven's models, who was alone in the studio.

Joan, meanwhile, startles Marcel when she appears at his door and marvels at the now completed bust.  Sure that she is feigning ignorance about the model's identity, Marcel informs her about The Creeper and tells her she is about to die.  At the same time, Steven goes to Joan's office and discovers the printer's copy of Marcel's sketch on her desk.  Back at Marcel's, The Creeper overhears the artist inform Joan that he will turn The Creeper over to the police if they should connect him to the killer.  Enraged by the artist's easy betrayal, The Creeper kills Marcel, then goes after Joan.  Just as The Creeper is about to grab Joan, Steven pounds at the door, and Larry, who also saw the sketch on Joan's desk, arrives in time to shoot the murderer.  Later, a relieved Joan tells Steven that she is finally ready to quit her job and marry him.

Notes
The working title of this film was Murder Mansion. Murder Mansion was also the working title of a 1945 "Charlie Chan" release, The Jade Mask.  Although Rondo Hatton's onscreen credit reads "Introducing Rondo Hatton, House of Horrors was not Hatton's debut film.  He previously had appeared in several films, including a 1944 Sherlock Holmes story, The Pearl of Death, in which he played a character named "The Hoxton Creeper."  Hatton also portrayed "The Creeper" in a late 1946 Universal picture, The Brute Man (see above entry).  The story of The Brute Man takes place before the action of House of Horrors.  Although House of Horrors was not Hatton's last picture, he died on 2 Feb 1946, three weeks prior to its New York opening.  Modern sources note that Kent Taylor was first cast as "Lieutenant Larry Brooks," and that Billy Newell replaced Milburn Stone in the role of "Detective Tomlinson."  Modern sources credit Robert Murdock as property master, John Brooks as gaffer, and Ed Cushing as Hatton's stand-in.