Just Before Dawn

In the 7th film of the "Crime Doctor" series based on the radio program, Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) is summoned to take attend a diabetic, and gives an injection of insulin taken from a bottle in the patient's pocket. The man dies and Ordway discovers that what he thought was insulin was really poison. Oops! Two other people are murdered before Ordway discovers who replaced the insulin with poison and what the motive was.

William Castle injects some macabre atmosphere in this tight little mystery that is quite deceptive, at first starting off as a straightforward mystery before veering towards a grim organisation regarding corpses at a mortuary - and then veers back to a whodunnit angle in the finale. A rather clever and fun mystery with crisp dialogue and the reliable Warner Baxter at the helm. Nice little twists and turns.

Interesting Doctor Ordway's investigation ,with good scenes in the mortician's funeral parlor ;it's an easy place to get rid of dead bodies, although there are plenty of implausibilities , Shakespeare's quotation to begin with , but it's the name of the game : extremely eventful ,with many characters, many suspects ,and an originality:although Ordway summons and gathers all the suspects a la Hercule Poirot , the whodunit is solved later on ,when the hero is alone with the murderer.

High-quality mystery that attempts a lot and delivers in a serious, solid manner. Warner Baxter as always does fine work with a kind of personal and professional integrity.

This film is well-directed by someone who obviously knows the mystery genre. There is such immediate, sinister danger lurking over Dr.Ordway and everyone else that the plot remains taught from start to finish. Also enhanced by good plot twists, especially near the beginning and near the end.

There are three very sinister bad guys, as portrayed with evil believability by Martin Kosleck and the actors portraying his henchmen. The henchman named Casper is every bit as threatening as the killer "Lash Canino" in Bogart's "The Big Sleep".

First-rate character actor Charles D. Brown is excellent as the police inspector. Robert Barratt and Mona Barrie are solid and watchable as a couple caught up in the story.

When his neighbour knocks on his door to say they are having a party in the house opposite, she doesn't actually invite "Dr. Ordway" (Warner Baxter) but instead asks him to come and treat a suffering diabetic. He helps out with the insulin only for the man to promptly collapse in a heap, dead, with only a dying phrase to help explain. The autopsy reveals the drug was poisoned, and so police inspector "Burns" (Charles D. Brown) suggests to the doctor that the best way to exonerate himself from any suspicion of complicity is to do the detective work himself. His investigations prove quite perilous, though, and as the body count starts to mount we are introduced to a couple of sinister characters and begin to see the a pattern of greed and duplicity. "Ordway" must use his guile to outwit his unknown antagonist at some considerable risk to himself (and his eyesight) as he tries to entrap the culprit. This is quite good fun with Baxter delivering engagingly as he tests and tricks his suspects. There are no shortage of them, and the supporting cast provide workmanlike efforts as he whittles down the suspects and tries to stay on the right side of the crematorium wall. The denouement is all rather rushed and the audience is well ahead of the curve as he follows the clues, but it's still quite a watchable short drama.

In this entry of the Crime Doctor series, starring Warner Baxter as psychiatrist Dr. Robert Ordway, Ordway's neighbor knocks on his door one night and asks him to attend to a party guest, a diabetic, who has passed out. He hasn't taken his insulin, which he usually takes before dinner, but dinner has been delayed. Dr. Ordway asks the diabetic's sister where he keeps his insulin, she retrieves it, and Ordway gives him the dose. The man regains consciousness for just a few minutes and then dies. Ordway has injected him with a mixture of insulin and poison. As the police say to Ordway the next day "Someone has made a fine sucker out of you." It turns out that Walter Foster, the victim, was a man who inherited 250 thousand dollars - a tidy sum in those days - and in a couple of years had blown through it all. The victim also had some interesting last words "God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another", from Hamlet. Me? If I was in such a bind I'm sure I would just say "Help me I'm dying!!!", rather than quote Shakespeare, but that's another story.

Angry that he has been made the patsy in this murder, and also having his natural curiosity about crime, Ordway goes about trying to find the murderer. This entry just oozes atmosphere. You have strange goings on at a funeral parlor, a screaming woman trapped in the funeral parlor with a dead body that is to be buried the next morning, and the parlor's hearse driving around menacingly at night, looking more like it is in search of creating corpses rather than just hauling them.

This entry was directed by William Castle and has that macabre feeling for which his films were well known. I'd say the story and direction make this a cut above the other Crime Doctor films, not that any of the others were bad or even mediocre. I'd recommend it.