The selection of Warner Oland as the star of 20th Century Fox's "Charlie Chan" film series elevated the actor out of the rut of playing villains, as he had done during the silent and early sound era. (Oland had already played Sax Rohmer's "insidious" arch-criminal Dr. Fu Manchu three times and went head to head with leatherneck Lon Chaney as a Chinese bandit leader in Tell It To the Marines [1926].) A stage-trained actor with a subspecialty in Shakespeare, Oland brought charisma and surprising pathos to writer Earl der Biggers' brilliantly analytical but endlessly deferential Honolulu copper Charlie Chan, though he still enjoyed the occasional walk on the dark side. He was poisoner "Boris Karlov," bent on taking down a Russian dynasty, in Drums of Jeopardy (1931), a lycanthrope terrorizing Soho in Werewolf of London (1936), and a shady psychopathologist with more than a clinical interest in a cache of hidden loot in Before Dawn (1933). Produced by RKO Radio Pictures, Before Dawn was released in the wake of the studio's success with King Kong (1933) and benefitted as well from source material penned by British mystery writer Edgar Wallace. Tapped by producer Merian C. Cooper to direct this old dark house thriller was Irving Pichel, co-director of The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and a busy Hollywood character actor in his own right. Screenwriter Garrett Fort was at this point fresh from his success as a contributor to the scripts for Universal's Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).

By Richard Harland Smith