Expected more

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

It's sad that Before I Hang which started off with so much possibility, ended up with Boris Karloff playing yet another mad scientist. The film was alluding to stem cell research three generations before it was a possibility. The film begins with Karloff receiving a death sentence for a 'mercy' killing of a patient. In light of what subsequently happens you've got to wonder if Karloff was telling the whole truth as he spoke before the death sentence was passed.Passed it was though, but Boris had the good fortune to get to a prison where the doctor, Edward Van Sloan, was a fan of his work and he persuades warden Ben Taggart to allow to him to work with him in the last few weeks of his life.Of course those are some eventful weeks, made even longer when the governor commutes his sentence. Bodies start piling up all around Boris when he starts injecting himself with that concoction he's brewed up.Karloff will of course please his legion of fans, he gives them the Boris they've come to expect. But I think this film could have been so much more and said so much more if not relegated to Columbia's B picture factory.

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.

Boris Karloff played the benign "mad" scientist whose intentions were good but turn awry better than anyone else. Most of his mad scientists were men put into bad situations by some kind of catalyst beyond their control and Before I Hang is no exception. Karloff plays a doctor brought before a jury for a mercy killing - a man who had been living in terminal pain sought out Karloff's help with hopes that a youth age-suppressing serum he had been working on would help regulate the pain and off-set the aging process. It didn't work and Karloff aided in his assisted death. Karloff is sent to prison but finds that the warden believes in his work and allows him, with the aid of Edward Von Sloan the prison doctor, to work on his serum just weeks before he is to be hanged for his crime. Before I Hang has really quite a preposterous storyline but Boris Karloff breathes life into it rather nicely with a gentle performance edged by a maniacal turn as he injects himself with the serum that has some bad side effects. The other actors are all very good with old Karloff nemesis from Frankenstien Von Sloan doing very well with his rather small, thankless role and Eugene Palette giving a good turn as the warden. Karloff's three old friends are all well-played and Evelyn Keyes as his daughter adequate as is Bruce Bennet as her love interest and Karloff's former assistant. The movie is not particularly fast-paced but the tension does build increasingly with effect. Before I Hang is a rather nice addition to Karloff's Columbia Mad Doctor roles. Perhaps not the best of them but certainly stands strong with the rest of them.