We Who Are About to Die (1937) - A weirdly upbeat death row drama

Look, if you have a soft spot for dusty 1930s crime dramas where everyone talks like they have a train to catch, We Who Are About to Die is absolutely worth seventy minutes of your time. But if you cannot stand old-school staginess or screeching tires that sound like a dying cat, you will probably hate it.

John Beal plays Connie, a young guy who gets framed for a payroll heist. It happens so fast you barely have time to feel bad for him before he is wearing prison stripes.

The prison scenes are where the movie gets truly weird. The guys on death row are just... so chatty? 😅

They sit in their cells cracking jokes and sharing cigarettes like they are at a slightly damp summer camp. It has that same rapid-fire chatter you find in Wolf's Clothing, but with a much darker shadow hanging over the rooms.

Preston Foster plays the detective friend who tries to solve the case on the outside. He has an incredibly loud suit and a habit of pointing his finger at everyone he talks to.

And then there is Ann Dvorak as the girlfriend. She spent the first half of the movie looking like she was about to sneeze, but she really brings the drama later on.

There is this one specific scene where a guard drops a metal cup and literally everyone in the cell block jumps three feet in the air. The sound design in these old movies is always so loud and clunky.

I did get a bit bored during the middle section where they just explain the legal loopholes. My mind wandered and I started wondering why the warden's desk was so clean.

It has some of the same courtroom energy as For the Defense, but it focuses way more on the quirky guys waiting for the chair.

Some things I wrote down while watching:

• The priest looks like he is about twelve years old.
• Some very obvious painted backgrounds during the car chase.
• A dog that appears for three seconds and then is never seen again.

It does not quite stick the landing because the resolution feels incredibly rushed. Like, 'Oh, we found the guy, let's go get some hamburgers' level of fast.

But hey, it kept me awake. And sometimes that is all you really need from an old B-movie.