Before I Hang ***½ (1940, Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes, Bruce Bennett, Pedro de Cordoba, Edward Van Sloan) – Classic Movie Review 5644

Director Nick Grinde’s lusty 1940 chiller provides the quintessential crazy scientist role for Boris Karloff as Dr John Garth, who has been researching a cure for aging, but is sent to prison after being condemned to death in three weeks by hanging for a carrying out mercy killing on an elderly friend.

On Death Row Dr Garth is allowed to continue his experiments on an anti-aging serum, using the blood of a recently executed convicted killer. Then the prison warden (Ben Taggart) and scientist Dr Ralph Howard (Edward Van Sloan) test it on Garth, injecting into his veins just before his execution.

But a last-minute call says Dr Garth’s sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment.  It turns out the serum has reversed some of the effects of aging, but he has a sudden urge to kill, induced by the murderer’s blood in his body.

Eventually, he is granted a full pardon and returns home to live with his daughter, Martha (Evelyn Keyes), and to continue his research on the anti-aging serum, but finds out that he has become a Jekyll-&-Hyde character and goes on the rampage.

Grinde’s energetic, busily plotted, fast-moving sci-fi horror thriller outing is highly enjoyable and, with a heady script, and plenty of authority in performances and direction, is even reasonably credible, given the sci-fi horror circumstances.

A few wooden support performances hold things back but not badly. It is still a most entertaining movie and Karloff puts on a great show.

Also in the cast are Pedro de Cordoba, Wright Kramer, Barton Yarborough, Don Beddoe, Robert Fiske, Kenneth MacDonald, Bertram Marburgh, and Frank Richards as convict Otto Kron.

It runs 71 minutes, is made by Columbia Pictures, is written by Robert D Andrews, is shot in black and white by Benjamin Kline, is produced by Wallace MacDonald, and is scored by Morris W Stoloff.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5644

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