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Low-budget producer John R. Freuler at least attempted something different in this, the last production to be released by the grandly named but thoroughly obscure Big 4 Film Corp., a production company set up to produce sound Westerns featuring Bob Custer. For Murder at Dawn, however, Freuler managed to engage Jack Mulhall and Josephine Dunn, both formerly associated with Warner, and with some box-office allure still intact. Add to that the now famous laboratory equipment designed for Frankenstein by Kenneth Strickfaden, and you may anticipate an entertaining hour or so of old-fashioned hokum. Alas, Freuler's lack of hardly any budget at all remains a huge obstacle, and neither Mulhall nor the cool Dunn are able to overcome Richard Thorpe's lethargic direction. Happily, both Thorpe and Strickfaden's doodads reappeared later in more congenial surroundings, the former as a proficient contract director at MGM, the latter in both Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Young Frankenstein (1974).