"Despite the many similar titles which might suggest familiarity (One Hour to Live, Four Hours to Kill, 12 Hours to Kill, Two Weeks to Live), there is little likelihood that you have seen Six Hours to Live.... (It is) the kind of thoroughly worthwhile and unjustly obscured film that has always been the basic raison d'etre for our film series. I purposely don't want to say too much about it, since the sheer surprise value of delving back forty years to such an unknown quantity is a delight in itself. Suffice it to say that it has enough plot substance for a dozen movies, and enough production technique for a dozen more.... It's the most Germanic of all of (William Dieterle's) early Hollywood films, perhaps because for the first time he has a thoroughly European theme to back up his romanticist-expressionist visuals.... 'Thriller' is perhaps too loose a description to be wholly apt since it overlaps into many genres and once or twice even strays dangerously near predictable soap-opera set-ups. But science-fiction, with some elaborate laboratory scenes, is certainly a major motif.... Photographically, Six Hours to Live is extremely imaginative, while the production itself is quite extraordinarily handsome...." William K. Everson (1971)