Before I Hang (1940)

A routine but well-staged programmer with the inimitable Boris Karloff as an elderly, mild-mannered scientist who unsurprisingly becomes a homicidal maniac when he uses himself as a guinea pig for a new serum he has developed to prolong life - a serum which, surprise, surprise, contains the blood of a hanged murderer. It's not long before Karloff is growing younger before our very eyes, but he also finds himself becoming possessed by a murderous spirit which causes him to strangle all those who are close friends or relatives. What follows is a string of shocking murders, but at a sixty minute running time it's not long before the police are on the case to hunt Karloff down.The same plot - or at least a variation of it - was already a bit clichéd by the time this movie was made, but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining. There's a good pacing, with no scenes dragging as they tend to do from this period, and at least there are plenty of opportunity for chills and scares thanks to Karloff's performance. Here, Karloff is a tragic monster, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde, and Karloff's sympathetic portrayals of screen villains and monsters were always what he did best; you end up caring for his character, and thus become involved in the movie. BEFORE I HANG is no exception, and Karloff's strong acting makes the whole movie worthwhile; furthermore, as a policeman in the film says, Karloff is the only person to send a chill down one's spine whilst being polite - his understated menace is highly effective, and the scenes in which his whole visage grows locked and his eyes madly staring are great stuff.The supporting cast is a strong one, including genre veterans Evelyn Keyes as Karloff's unsuspecting daughter, and Dracula's own Van Helsing, Edward Van Sloan, as a scientist friend of Karloff's. There are some atmospheric moments to enjoy, my favourite coming when Karloff escapes through the fog, his eyes staring almost luminously in the dark with madness. Plenty of macabre touches and Karloff's commanding performance highlight a minor, but efficient, low-budget horror yarn from a forgotten studio.

This starts out so well. We have a man who really shouldn't have been executed, facing the music for doing an act of kindness toward a fellow human being. The people around him give him his wish to continue to do research and he is eventually pardoned because of his great discoveries. Unfortunately, to prove his point, he gets injected with the blood of a three-time killer who was hanged. Of course, true to plot, Karloff's kindly old doctor begins to black out and do evil deeds to the people he loved. He has discovered a sort of fountain of youth, but his old buddies realize that he is messing where he shouldn't have been messing, and want nothing to do with it. Whenever he gets all worked up, he becomes a strangler. There's nothing very remarkable about it and the science is quite ludicrous. Karloff and the rest of the cast give it the old college try, but the thing is so lame that it just falls flat. Totally predictable.

Kindly Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff) is found guilty of a mercy killing and sentenced to hang. While in prison he experiments in trying to find a serum that halts old age. He uses the blood of an executed murderer and tries it on himself. He is then pardoned and finds the serum works...but it turns him into a cold-blooded killer which he has no control over.This is pretty much a forgotten movie and it's easy to see why. It's pretty slow and dull with terrible dialogue and questionable science. Also it's (technically) not a horror movie--it plays more like a melodrama with horrific touches. Wonderful actress Evelyn Keyes is in here too but is given nothing to do. Karloff single-handedly saves this from total disaster. He's just great in his role--he makes the worst dialogue sound like Shakespeare! Also when the killing urge takes over you can actually see the changes in his face and mannerisms and there are also some nice atmospheric scenes at the end. There's a funny lapse in continuity--Keyes finds out by the morning paper about a murderer--but a scene outside the house shows it's night time! This is really only for Karloff fans. I give it a 4.

The third Boris Karloff "mad doctor" film is an interesting if surprisingly rather dull affair; the star is always worth watching, however, and his role here certainly offers him plenty to sink his teeth into: he starts the film as an old man about to be hanged for a mercy killing, is then rejuvenated through a serum he develops while in prison (the kindly warden having consented to Karloff continuing his experiments there until the time of his execution comes) and finally turns into a strangler (the unfortunate side-effect of the drug which contained the blood cells of a murderer)! Though the supporting cast features several familiar faces, they're all somewhat underused: Evelyn Keyes and Bruce Bennett are certainly among the higher-prolife actors to fill the 'romantic interest' roles in this type of film, but they're just about the most thankless I've ever seen (especially Bennett who has barely 5 minutes of screen time)! Edward van Sloan's presence was especially welcome (having memorably faced-off with Karloff twice before) but, again, his prison doctor here is nowhere near as juicy as his iconic roles in Dracula (1931), FRANKENSTEIN (1931), THE MUMMY (1932) and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936)! Pedro de Cordoba, on the other hand, is quite poignant as Karloff's pianist friend whose career is fading due to his advancing age; of course, Boris is willing to help him out in this regard, but his new-found and uncontrollable murderous instincts prevail! A measure of amusement is also gleaned from noticing the recurring presence of such actors as Roger Pryor, Don Beddoe and Charles Trowbridge in roles which were pretty much reprises of ones they had played in the earlier Columbia Karloffs! On the debit side, the low budget especially shows here in the film's rather dismal sets - the other three of Karloff's serious horror efforts for Columbia made good use of the star's gadget-filled house (THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG [1939]), frozen underground lab (THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES [1940]) and Karloff's imposing cliff-top mansion (THE DEVIL COMMANDS [1941]); besides, the rather clinical experiments become repetitive and the film talky, which is further exacerbated by the regrettable fact that throughout there are few action/horror highlights per se.As far as the film's DVD presentation goes, I found it to be disappointingly lackluster: while the print itself is adequate, there are no scene selections for any of the films in this set (which also proves to be the case with Universal's Karloff collection and the "Inner Sanctum" Set!) nor, for that matter, proper menu screens - have the studios become stingy or what?!