Just Before Dawn

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.

Some new neighbors of Dr. Ordway call on him one nigh as the man of the house is not feeling well. Turns out he's a diabetic and missed his insulin shot. Warner Baxter gives him his shot, but moments later the man is dead.

After that introduction the police allow Baxter a free hand t work as their agent in solving the crime. The investigation leads him to a funeral parlor where he director Martin Kosleck has an interesting sideline in plastic surgery for criminal types.

Baxter takes a potentially fatal gamble in finding he final solution. Watch and see what i mean.

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.

This time Dr. Ordway (WARNER BAXTER) is involved in a plot concerning diabetics and insulin with the reliable MARTIN KOSLECK as the villain of the piece who is not above switching a bottle of insulin for poison and making Dr. Ordway the unsuspecting killer.

While there are plenty of suspects who might have wanted the deceased man out of the way, the plot hinges mostly on sinister doings at the Ganss Mortuary run by Kosleck who is prone to dispose of anyone who is going to reveal information to Dr. Ordway.

It's a good old-fashioned mystery with some creepy characters among the villains assisting Kosleck and the plot is less murky than some of the others in the crime doctor series. There's a clever plot twist with the doctor using supposed blindness as deception in catching the killer.

Summing up: One of the better entries in the crime doctor series.

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.