BEFORE I HANG-Columbia-1940- Boris Karloff portrays John Garth, an old but benevolent scientist working on a “youth serum”, who’s found guilty of a mercy killing and condemned to die. Before his execution he gets help from a prison doctor (FRANKENSTEIN co-star Edward Van Sloan) and is injected with a new formula. They want to study the effects after his death. At the last minute his sentence is commuted to life. The new formula causes Garth to become about 20 years younger. Unfortunately, they used blood from an executed killer when they mixed the serum. After he kills Van Sloan (and another inmate is blamed) he’s paroled. He wants three of his old friends to be inoculated with the new serum but strangles them instead. His daughter (Evelyn Keyes, who’d been in GONE WITH THE WIND the previous year) might be his next victim!
Her boyfriend is another doctor played by Bruce Bennett who started his acting life as Herman Brix. A former Olympian, Brix starred in the Edgar Rice Borroughs backed THE NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN (1935). He changed his name in the late thirties and makes an appearance in another Karloff “mad scientist” vehicle THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES. He was later in MILDRED PIERCE (1945) and TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948). He died February 2007 at the age of 100!
BIH is not really a horror film. In fact it’s more like a standard melodrama except for the presence of Karloff which allowed it to be advertised as a horror film. It’s long on theory but moves along fairly well thanks to the workman like direction of veteran Nick Grinde who’d already directed Karloff (as a good scientist gone wrong) in THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940) and THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939) which BIH co-scripter Karl Brown also worked on.
THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH-20th Century Fox-1962-This minimilistic, small cast movie was probably made because the director had access to the giant, spooky mansion this talk-fest was shot on. Kent Taylor (soon to be a regular for Al Adamson) plays a brilliant scientist and head of a project to land a probe on Mars. He spends a belated Christmas with his wife (Marie Windsor) and their two children at the mansion. They start to see doubles of themselves and that about explains the SFX. Doubles of every family member appearing mysteriously and confounding the family. Taylor’s double talks to him though and we learn that Martians made of “pure intellect” are invading Earth! The invaders kill the daughter’s boyfriend and Taylor’s scientist colleague (William Mims) and in the end burn up the entire family and replace them. Except for a cheap scene of the probe on Mars during the credits the whole movie takes place at the mansion.
Director Maury Dexter who later on directed the marijuana “classic” MARYJANE and the biker film HELLES BELLES and many episodes of TV’s “Little House On The Prairie”, makes little use of the eerie sets and the “fright” scenes never really come off. Screenwriter Harry Spalding who wrote many other low budget features like WITCHCRAFT (1964) and CURSE OF THE FLY (1965) and the bigger budgeted Disney flop WATCHER IN THE WOODS (1980), provides great scientific dialogue but unfortunately that’s all there is. Dialogue! Taylor made the seldom seen HARBOR LIGHTS for Dexter & Spalding the next year. Then THE CRAWLING HAND!
THE SLIME PEOPLE-Acme Video-1962- I guess actor Robert Hutton got tired of being directed in low budget features like THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY and INVISIBLE INVADERS so he decided to direct one of his own.
He plays a TV sportscaster who helps an old scientist and his two daughters fight off the title creatures. They come from ‘the subterranean depths” and look like cartoonish, walking ears of corn who gurgle a lot. And they throw spears too! Hutton’s group (they are joined by a young hero type played by William Boyce, who resembles Conan O’Brien!) are trapped in the ruins of LA because of a “wall” designed by the monsters. The whole plot is established by the cast viewing some (staged, but often funny) news reel footage. Like in HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, salt plays a role in destroying the monsters! Some scenes take place on cheap sets but the outdoors parts are shrouded in fog (supposedly created by The Slime People), sometimes obscuring the action! A shot of the young guy running up a hill is shown twice. Les Treymayne plays an eccentric author who’s killed in a meat locker. The final scene featuring an army jeep may have doubled the budget!
How about a kiss?
Producer Joseph Robertson (who appears as a drunk ) also made THE THING THAT WOULDN’T DIE. Wife Blair was a co-writer (she also wrote AGENT FOR H.A.R.M. in 1966) and appears as Mrs. Anderson. Co-writer Vince Skarstedt later wrote the screenplay for John Derek’s war drama ONCE BEFORE I DIE (1965).
Thanks for reading!
