Documentary Review: Misguided 'Rondo and Bob' Goes Big and Comes Up Short

Rondo and Bob is a strange documentary. The film purports to tell the story of Robert (Bob) Burns, the legendary propmaster and set designer for the horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and his obsession with forgotten monster movie star, Rondo Hatton. What we actually get is a confounding series of re-enactments of each man’s life and a few disconnected talking head segments about Burns’ strange life.

If you are looking for insights into why Bob loved Rondo and how he worked to preserve Rondo's monster movie legend and his unique life, you won’t find that here. What we get instead is a series of facile sketches acted out by amateur actors of suspect acting talent. That, and a bizarre approach to editing that involves slam banging from one story to the next, inelegantly jumping from Burns’ life to Hatton’s life with the care of a sledgehammer through a wall.

Both Bob Burns and Rondo Hatton are fascinating people who lived very interesting lives. Hatton suffered from Acromegaly, a condition that caused his skull to grow to a dangerous extent. His large head and small stature made him a unique individual but what everyone who knew Rondo remembered him for was his intelligence and sensitivity. He fought in World War 1 and suffered a sarin gas attack and survived.

Hatton came home and as his condition presented itself, it never slowed him down or dimmed his charm. Hatton became a reporter at a Florida newspaper and through that job he met and fell in love with a beautiful woman who would love him the rest of his tragically short life. He went to Hollywood after meeting a producer on location making a movie in Rondo’s hometown. The producer indicated that Rondo could make good money in Hollywood using his unique face as a horror movie calling card. For a time, he was seen as the heir apparent to Boris Karloff but his timing was off, the days of the Universal monsters had passed by the time Rondo Hatton arrived in Hollywood.

That’s not to say he didn’t find success. He found several roles that brought him a loyal horror movie fanbase. Among that fanbase was a budding horror movie buff named Robert “Bob” Burns. A film student in Texas, Bob saw tragedy first hand when he witnessed the horror of Charles Whitman’s clock-tower shooting of students on the campus of the University of Texas. Burns watched as a woman walking in front of him was shot in the back and bled out a mere few feet from him.

This had an effect on Bob but we aren’t here to diagnose how it affected his psyche. We do know that he went on to create some of the most iconic horror movie props in history but whether he’d been desensitized to violence by the Texas Shooting is unknowable. Also on the campus of the University of Texas that day was another future filmmaker named Tobe Hooper. A tragedy united them and depicting horror became their legacy.

That’s a pretty great story but as depicted in Rondo and Bob, re-enacted by ‘actors,’ the University of Texas scene especially plays close to comedy. I am certain that was not the intended effect. The choices made to depict so much of Bob and Rondo’s life stories via amateur re-enactments was a bold choice but one that ends up dooming the project. I don’t wish to be mean, everyone enacting these scenes are doing their best, but they could not overcome this failed idea.

Compounding the mistaken use of re-enactments is the closing credits which show us actual video of Bob Burns doing some of the funny schtick that the documentary had used an actor re-enact. All this does is make us wonder why they didn’t just show us the footage they clearly had available instead of a weak re-creation. It’s a bizarre choice amid a series of bad choices that all serve to overshadow the supposed subject of this documentary, Bob Burns’ unique fascination with a relatively minor part of Hollywood history.

The fact that I came away from Rondo and Bob feeling like I learned nothing about what drove Burns’ obsessive Rondo Hatton fandom is a testament to the failure of this documentary. It’s mind boggling that the makers of Rondo and Bob had the material necessary to tell this story but decided that it was more important to make use of inferior re-creations of real life.

Rondo and Bob, is now available on your favorite streaming rental sites. I don't recommend it, but if you remain curious, it's available.