Doomed to Die

The threesome of Mr. Wong, Det. Street and reporter Barbara Logan all return in this installment of the Mr. Wong series. All are wonderful and work well in this murder mystery. A shooting murder of a father by the unwanted son-in-law because the father has rejected him as his daughter's choice as husband. Both were heard shouting in the same room by two witnesses. Det. Street believes it is an open and shut case but Mr. Wong disagrees as well as reporter Logan. Many suspects with a score to settle make this whodunit a mystery to the end.

I'm working my way through the Horror Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and DOOMED TO DIE is one of the movies in the set.

Why DOOMED TO DIE is included in a collection of Horror Classics is a mystery. But having seen THE FATAL HOUR, I have to say that Boris Karloff cast is more convincing in DOOMED TO DIE as the Chinese detective, Mr. Wong. The makeup was certainly better.

Marjorie Reynolds, as the pushy reporter Bobbie Logan is an absolute hoot -- she is brash, bossy, feminine; and, smart. She alone is reason enough for me to run out and buy the whole Wong collection!

Mr. Wong is investigating the murder of a shipping magnate. The son of a rival, who was last seen with the deceased stands accused of the murder. After tracking down leads at the waterfront bar, another murder victim surfaces! With, of course, the ultimate conclusion (which I won't spoil for you.)

The movie was entertaining; and, well-paced. The acting was fine, as I knew all the characters. The plot was plausible; but, a bit convoluted.

Once you get past the notion of Boris Karloff as a Chinese detective, "Doomed to Die" offers a fair amount of fun. The famed James Lee Wong (Karloff) is hot on the trail of whoever pulled the trigger on shipping magnate Cyrus P. Wentworth (Melvin Lang). What initially looks like an open-and-shut case soon proves much more complex as Wong endures bullets, dead bodies and a constant questioning of his competence to get to the elusive (and completely unpredictable) truth.

Adding some welcome comic relief are hard-nosed policeman Bill Street (Grant Withers) and the ultimate thorn in his side, eager reporter Bobbie Logan (Marjorie Reynolds). Though they've been copied a hundred times in the more than 65 years since this picture was released, their antics are enjoyable and occasionally quite funny due to the duo's strong chemistry.

Overall, it's a little clichéd, confusing and at times slow, but "Doomed to Die" is perfect for a rainy night. It has a certain old movie/Scooby Doo charm even viewers who don't go for black-and-whiters can appreciate.

Doomed to Die (1940)

Oh boy, poor Boris Karloff. He's the star, and the one great presence, in this cobbled together movie, the last of Karloff's Mr. Wong movies. Someone edited the heck out of this one, and the complex plot gets hard to follow (and hard to believe!) in the hour it takes from start to finish.

That's not to say it's a bad movie. It's kind of fun, actually, and because so much is going on, you really have to pay attention, as the scenes keep changing and changing, and more and more characters appear and reappear. The plot itself is forced on things, with red herrings that are absurd and a huge disaster in the opening scenes that ultimately means little to the rest of it, or so it seems to me. There is deliberate comedy which is sometimes funny, and gives the movie an airiness that works pretty well.

Karloff, amazingly, plays a Chinese detective, and they do something to his eyes to make him more Asian, but otherwise he's very Karloff, which is good. There are some brief scenes in a so-called Chinatown, but nothing so colorful as, say, the end of "Lady from Shanghai." No, this is from a thoroughly B-movie series of six Mr. Wong films, all but one, with Karloff as Wong. There are at least two other series of films with Asian detectives, an interesting sub-genre, for sure. There are eight Mr. Moto films (with Peter Lorre) around the same time (late 1930s), and there are the almost countless Charlie Chan films (first in the earlier 30s with Warner Oland, and then the late 30s into the 40s starring Sidney Toler). All of these stars were not Asian, but that's the way Hollywood compromised its bigotry with its sense of what the mainstream American audiences wanted.

The thing that makes these Karloff films still watchable is their gritty urban settings, and the whodunnit quality that can hold even a mediocre movie together on a Sunday afternoon. "Doomed to Die" has some very dark night scenes (a third of the movie) and if they did that to save money on set design, that's fine with me because it makes them moody and inky. Nice.

Check out this rather nice Mr. Wong site:

cheddarbay.com/0000celebrityfiles/films/wong/wong.html

Take them for what they are and you might end up watching all of them!

The routine plot unfolds in so obvious a manner that one loses interest in the outcome. The production values are on the same level as they were in the other Wong pictures in the...series, and the performances are on a par with the material. Most of the comedy is provoked by the bickering between a detective and a young girl who tires to outwit him.. Boris Karloff saves this picture and makes it into another great classic series.