You won't be disappointed!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This starts out so well. We have a man who really shouldn't have been executed, facing the music for doing an act of kindness toward a fellow human being. The people around him give him his wish to continue to do research and he is eventually pardoned because of his great discoveries. Unfortunately, to prove his point, he gets injected with the blood of a three-time killer who was hanged. Of course, true to plot, Karloff's kindly old doctor begins to black out and do evil deeds to the people he loved. He has discovered a sort of fountain of youth, but his old buddies realize that he is messing where he shouldn't have been messing, and want nothing to do with it. Whenever he gets all worked up, he becomes a strangler. There's nothing very remarkable about it and the science is quite ludicrous. Karloff and the rest of the cast give it the old college try, but the thing is so lame that it just falls flat. Totally predictable.

Mad scientist Boris Karloff (as Dr. John Garth) is sentenced to hang, as an admitted "mercy killer". But, since his research in medicine is so important, Mr. Karloff is permitted to continue experimenting, in a laboratory behind bars. Karloff thinks human cells could be prompted to reproduce forever, curing both disease and old age. Believing he is going to be executed, Karloff uses his experimental serum on himself, and is transfused with the blood of a convicted murderer. Then, suddenly, Karloff is paroled. He becomes twenty years younger, but must fight the urge to kill, Kill, KILL! A cheap, ludicrous, but bearable star vehicle.**** Before I Hang (1940) Nick Grinde ~ Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes, Pedro de Cordoba

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.

Before I Hang: 3 out of 10: Boris Karloff stars as Dr. Kevorkian in this expose of stem cell research gone wrong.Okay maybe that is not completely accurate but one might certainly think along those lines as a doctor found guilty of a mercy killing is sentenced to hang despite his promising youth serum.Karloff quickly finds himself in a prison experimenting with the blood of a recently hanged killer the clock ticking against his own execution. He injects himself with the serum it works the governor pardons him and he goes off to save the world. Actually that is not completely accurate as well. Apparently the blood came from the prisoner "Abby Normal" and Karloff starts getting that look in his eyes and his over-sized handkerchief out of his pocket and the population of the movie starts dropping precipitously.The movie is poorly directed and despite some initially good albeit rushed ideas it quickly falls into the old blood memory turns man into killer nonsense. The pacing is bizarre with a ton of plot simply explained through voice-over (the hanging verdict in particular seems unlikely as shown) in the first half the second half with Karloff stalking the elderly drags.A weak film that starts of strong and quickly goes nowhere.