Just Before Dawn (1946)

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.

This is the 7th entry in the "Crime Doctor" series starring Warner Baxter as Dr. Robert Ordway. This time, at a party, he gives a diabetic in shock insulin, using a bottle of insulin in his pocket, only to find out it was poison when the patient dies. Before the man dies, he mutters something which turns out to be from Hamlet.There are two other murders, but as usual, Ordway figures it out. He has plenty of suspects, too.Directed by William Castle, this is an interesting story, though none of these "Crime Doctor" films are particularly thrilling. Baxter gives his usual relaxed performance, though it's noticeable in the later films that his health was failing.Good film for mystery buffs, even if you can figure out the end.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there were quite a few low-budget detective series movies, such as Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, the Saint, Boston Blackie and quite a few others. However, among the best of these were the Crime Doctor films because unlike the others, these films tended to have better constructed stories, greater believability and without the "comedy relief" that these other series liberally employed. For me, this made these films a welcome relief from the typical formula.In this movie, our hero Dr. Ordway (Warner Baxter) is called to a party because a guest has gone into diabetic shock. After quickly diagnosing it, he orders the guests to search the man's coat for his insulin. After injecting him, everyone (except the murderer) is shocked because the insulin had been secretly replaced with poison! Then, shortly after this, people begin disappearing and Ordway feels a duty to investigate the crimes. Oddly, it turns out that all this is related to a high-tech doctor who is so expert at plastic surgery that he can completely change a criminal's identity--making them impossible to detect! So, it's up to Ordway to infiltrate this evil mob and bring everyone to justice.Because the plot is very original and the film exciting, this one scores an 8--even with the silly stomach pump angle at the end of the film. Not quite as good as the first Crime Doctor film, but darn close.

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.