BEFORE I HANG Review

BEFORE I HANG, from 1940, stars Boris Karloff as a mad scientist -- now that's a stretch.  Seriously, ol' Boris played a mad doctor so many times he could probably have done it in his sleep, and as a matter of fact, he kept playing them for the rest of his career, and even after he was dead. In case you're wondering, I'm talking about the Mexican-made horror cheapies, THE CORPSE COLLECTORS, THE FEAR CHAMBER, THE INCREDIBLE INVASION, and THE SNAKE PEOPLE, that were released between 1969, the year of his death, and 1972. Boris shot all his scenes for those films in one weekend in 1968 with Jack Hill, the director of SPIDER BABY. But I digress. In the late '30s and early '40s, Boris was under contract to Columbia Pictures, where he made a number of fine low-budget shockers, of which BEFORE I HANG is a prime example.

Karloff plays Dr. John Garth, who is engaged in a series of experiments to reverse the effects of aging. After Boris does a little Jack Kevorkian number on one of his subjects, he ends up on death row. That's the trouble with mercy killing, folks: the judge usually doesn't show any mercy to the killer. But Boris doesn't let his death sentence get in the way of medical science, and, with a little help from old Van Helsing himself, Edward Van Sloan, he continues his experiments behind the walls of the big house. And that's just the first act of BEFORE I HANG, a short, sharp shocker that provides a little over an hour's worth of diversion for a rainy afternoon.

 Needless to say, things go horribly wrong, and end very badly for Boris.

Well, they say the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. Or in this case, he has a homicidal maniac for a patient. As is so often the case in these movies, the best of intentions lead to the worst of results, and I'm not talking about the quality of the film.

The message seems to be don't mess with mother nature or mother nature will mess your mind. Happened to Dr. Frankenstein, happened to the Invisible Man, and it happened to Boris Karloff in about 50 different movies.

Available on DVD as part of The Boris Karloff Collection from Sony Home Video.