LouHomey From my favorite movies..

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

utgard14 Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff) is convicted of a mercy killing and sentenced to hang. With the time he has left, he is allowed to continue his experiments in prison. He creates a serum that reverses aging and tries it out on himself. But side effects of the serum turn him into a homicidal maniac. Karloff is terrific in a role very similar to many others he had played before and always perfectly. He was so good at creating sympathetic performances out of characters that other actors would have played in broad strokes. Nice supporting cast that includes the always good Edward Van Sloan, Evelyn Keyes, Bruce Bennett, Don Beddoe, and the underrated Pedro de Cordoba. You might not recognize some of those names but it's a solid cast for a 'B' picture. Not the best of Karloff's mad scientist films but highly enjoyable anyway. Definitely give it a shot.

AaronCapenBanner Nick Grinde directs Boris Karloff for the third time in a familiar-sounding tale of Dr. John Garth, who was sentenced to death for a mercy killing, who nonetheless is allowed by the prison warden to experiment with his serum using the blood of an executed murderer. Garth uses it on himself however, and it proves a success, but has the unfortunate side-effect of periodically turning him into a killer. After one such murder(which is blamed on an escaped inmate) he is pardoned, but that doesn't stop his lapses into murder, as he decides to help some doctors with his serum, but that plan backfires. Standard thriller has a good performance from Boris, but that's all. Seen this done before, and better.

bkoganbing 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.

bsmith5552 "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.