User Reviews

"Before I Hang" was another of the films dealing with the age old problem of old age. Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff) is an aged scientist who is accused of the mercy killing of one of his patients. It seems that the good doctor had been experimenting with an age reducing serum and had failed. To end his patient's suffering, Garth had performed a mercy killing.

Sentenced to hang, Garth is sent to prison. Much to his surprise, the prison doctor, Dr. Howard (Edward Van Sloan) has convinced Warden Thompson (Ben Taggart) to allow Garth to continue his work until his execution. The two continue the work until the supply of blood needed for the serum runs low. Garth asks Howard to obtain the blood of an executed killer (you know where this is going to lead) to replenish the stock.

When Garth's execution date arrives, he asks Thompson to inject him with the serum and study the results following his death. At the last minute however, Garth's sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. In the weeks following his injection, Garth begins to show signs of becoming younger. Wanting to experiment further, Garth plans to continue his work by injecting Thompson with the serum. But as he is about to do so, he is overcome with an urge to kill and murders Thompson and a convict Otto Krone (Frank Richards) who happens to walk in at the wrong time.

Garth manages to lay the blame for Thompson's murder on Krone. Seen as a hero Garth is pardoned and released. He returns home but his daughter Martha (Evelyn Keyes) and his former assistant Dr. Paul Ames (Bruce Bennett) begin to suspect that something is wrong and............................

Again Karloff is excellent in the title role. He goes from a kindly old doctor to a psychopathic killer over the course of the film. Bruce Bennett had recently changed his name from Herman Brix and moved from playing Tarzan into character roles. Evelyn Keyes had just appeared in "Gone With the Wind" (1939) as one of Scarlet's sisters. Edward Van Sloan had supported both Karloff and Lugosi in several films of the 1930s.

Also in the cast are Pedro de Cordoba, Wright Kramer and Bertram Mabourgh as Garths three aging friends whom Garth offers to "help" and Kenneth MacDonald (there's no mistaking that voice) as a prison guard.

Good "mad doctor" film.

Karloff often portrayed characters who were torn between good and evil - memorably in THE BLACK ROOM where he played twins, but I have never seen him do such a great job of acting as he does in this film.

It opens with him portraying an old, weak, good intentioned doctor - a sympathetic and at times pathetic character. But once he injects himself with a serum that was made from tainted blood, that of a serial murder, he changes. He is younger in appearance and action, and he is a killer, a tortured one, but a chilling one as well. It's great to watch.

While the movie has the weakness of being a cheaper B-film, there is still a lot of good work in it. The camera work with the use of light and shadow is exceptional, the music is better than in some other Karloff films I've watched, and the scenes involving blood are almost too strong to watch.

Often in these films there are times when you think they could have been much better with a bigger budget, but they still accomplish so much. The scene where the doctor's daughter goes into his lab and the door closes behind her, shutting us out for just a moment, gave me a chill as good as something from Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY.

So catch this little known gem and enjoy it.

While the 1939 Nick Grinde film "The Man They Could Not Hang" dealt with the story of a kindly scientist who vows revenge after his experiment with a mechanical heart is interrupted, this one takes a similar theme to new twists and turns out to be much better. The story opens with Karloff being sentenced to death for aiding an elderly man in "assisted suicide" which is labeled here as mercy killing. Karloff goes to prison and goes to work for the prison's doctor, keeping his experiment going as he prepares to die. On the day of his execution, he is sentenced to life in prison instead, and gladly continues his experimentation of aiding the elderly, unaware that the serum of a dead killer he had implanted in himself has poisoned his mind, making him do quite the opposite than what he originally intended.

There's a sad look in the eye of the classic pianist Karloff visits to implant the serum in to test him and improve the quality of his life. The vulnerability and trust in this man is a quiet visual that will remain in my mind's eye when I think of this film. There are some touching realizations of how pathetic we become as our bodies age and mind fights to remain strong in spite of physical pain. Karloff literally becomes "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as he struggles between the good doctor and the maniacal killer in doing what he wants to do for society and doing what the killer's poisoned blood did to make the dead prisoner kill in the first place.

As fast moving as the predecessor, this isn't based upon the revenge plot which dominated and weakened the first film, but more on how good intentions are sometimes the pathway to hell when the rules of the universe aren't followed. Karloff goes between good and evil with ease, and his performance is one of his best. The doctor may not be mad, but his experiments will certainly drive him that way.

A scientist devoted to solving the process of aging is convicted of a "mercy killing" and due to hang, granted permission to continue his experiments with colleague Dr. Ralph Howard(Edward Van Sloan, of Dracula fame)in a prison laboratory until his sentence is to be carried out. After developing a serum, and with only a few hours left before facing his hanging, Dr. John Garth(Bortis Karloff)decides to inoculate himself with the use of blood deriving from an executed murderer, with tragic results. Granted a reprieve by the governor with his sentence reduced to life-in-prison, Garth finds that he's actually getting younger, but the blood from the murderer used in the serum which was inoculated in his veins contaminates him with an uncontrollable urge to kill which places innocents in danger. In fact, Garth strangles Howard before a thief enters the lab, with a scuffle killing the man. Garth is considered an innocent harmed in that scuffle when in fact he was the man behind both deaths. Released a free man, his old friends he wishes to inoculate become targets thanks to the inner desire to kill, one by one victims of handkerchief stranglings. Garth will hope to pass on knowledge to his daughter's fiancé Paul(Bruce Bennett)before turning himself in to the proper authorities. But, will he be able to do this before the urge to kill actually threatens the life of daughter Martha(Evelyn Keyes)? Meanwhile, the police suspect Garth might be behind the stranglings and investigate accordingly.

Nice little 60 minute B-movie programmer with a fine performance from Karloff as the tragic victim of corrupted blood, an experiment gone awry. Many will find similarities to many films he was making at the time, playing scientists who meant well, falling prey to unforeseen circumstances regarding unusual experiments often rejected by the medical community at large. The "victim of science" theme isn't fresh by today's standards considering so many films have been made since this film concerning scientists/doctors and their attempts to advance the medical field/life through unorthodox means. I think Karloff's sympathetic performance reels in the viewer and the film is nicely produced adhering to the typically blessed Columbia Pictures studio system where even low-budget offerings carried a polished look and style(..see "Cry of the Werewolf" for further proof). Karloff was always adept at portraying characters far older than he was and this ability is used here where he starts out as a man perhaps 60 or so, looking younger as the film continues. You expect nothing less than excellent when Karloff headlines your movie. I relish the fact that there many of these less heralded films in Karloff's resume still left for me to discover. So often we back his career into a corner where he's known for his Universal and Val Lewton films, when there's a plethora of little underrated titles ready for the viewing public.

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.

I don't know how many movies -- most of them pretty poor -- have been made about anatomical transplants causing the recipient to ape the deranged behavior of the donor. Maybe the most amusing is Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein", when Igor rushes to get the transplant from the laboratory, drops the good one, and substitutes a brain labeled A. B. Normal. ("Abnormal," get it?) There's a movie circulating on cable TV now about a baboon heart, and I remember Michael Caine got a murderous black hand a few years ago.

In this instance, Boris Karloff is a doctor convicted of a mercy killing and sentenced to hang. He's been working on an anti-death serum and, while in prison, is permitted to continue his research alongside the prison's doctor, Edward Van Sloan.

He undertakes an experiment that results in the kind of evidence that investigators refer to as "self report." That is, he injects himself with serum based on tinkering with the blood of a murderer. Well, let's not laugh too hard. That's how the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman discovered LSD.

The problem is that the serum works in the sense that it regresses the ancient Doctor Karloff to the age of about forty, but since the original blood sample was drawn from a murderer, the desire to kill has also been transferred. You can always tell when one of his irrational impulses are coming on because he rubs the back of his neck. Before he collapses, Karloff is able to strangle Van Sloan in private. The murder is blamed on someone else and Karloff is released from prison for his contribution to medical research.

Now he's out in the open, back in society, and he wants to experiment on his close old friends, including Pedro de Cordoba as a pianist whose age has slowed down the tempo of his Chopin. De Cordoba sees Karloff alone and agrees to the injection but Karloff kills him instead.

And so on.

This seems to be regarded as a horror film by some. I don't know why. It's more of a drama. Karloff gives a very sympathetic performance. He's particularly endearing as the ancient practitioner, bent and kyphotic, who is convicted and sentenced to death for putting an old acquaintance out of his intractable pain after months of treating him.

Evelyn Keyes doesn't have much to do, but what little she does is critical.

There's little violence, no blood, and nothing supernatural. It's a relatively quiet movie about a man who finds that, now and then, he can't help himself. Doctor Jeykll had the same problem, didn't he? It wouldn't be surprising if the writers hadn't begun their story with the kernel of Stevenson's in mind.

(Some Spoilers) 1940 turned out to be a bumper year for Boris Karloff with him staring in eight movies mostly as a kindly misunderstood man of science. In "Before I Hang" Boris is at it again as the meek and sensitive Dr. John Garth who's life long quest for the secret of eternal youth and excellent health has lead him to face the hangman in the murder, or mercy killing, of one of his patients.

Condemned to death and sentenced to be hung for his crime Dr. Garth nevertheless is allowed to conducted his experiences behind bars. Hours before he's to be executed Dr. Garth has himself injected with a serum that would forever keep his cells from decaying and keep him both healthy and youthful. It also turns out that Grath has become infused with the blood of a triple murderer who's been executed the day before. That serum that was to help the future of humanity in fact created a monster who will kill anyone who stand in his way, in his mad and misguided attempt too save the human race, even his sweet daughter Martha played by Evelyn Keys.

Garth despite him murdering fellow scientist Dr. Ralph Howard, Edward Van Sloan, and prison orderly Otto Krone, Frank Richards, is overlooked in their murders only because he left no eye witnesses to his crimes. It's later-moments before he was to be hung- when Dr. Garth's death sentence was commented by the state Governor that he really went to work on his experiments. Later granted a full pardon and being reinstated back in the medical profession Dr. Garth, feeling invincible, goes bonkers in him murdering any one who refuses to under go or rejects his "youth" treatment even his best and most trusting friends! One of Dr. Garth's very talented and elderly friends the world renowned concert pianist Victor Sondina, Pedro de Cordoba, who in fact, against his better judgment,consented to his crazy experiment ended up not being cured from the aging process, like Garth promised him, but being strangled by the crazed scientist who just lost control of his senses!

It was when the helpless Dr. Garth almost ended up strangling his own daughter Martha, who only survived her father's insanity by almost dropping dead from fright, that he finally realized what a complete nut and psycho killer he really was. It was then that Dr. Garth decided to let the law exact justice on his troubled soul and also ended up, in again losing control of his actions, having the state save the expense of hanging him!