Pluskylang Great Film overall

Rpgcatech Disapointment

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Chantel Contreras It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Tweekums Shortly after a fire at sea that lead to the death of over four hundred passengers Cyrus Wentworth, the owner of the shipping line, is murdered. The police are convinced that the killer is Dick Fleming, the son of a rival shipping magnate, who was engaged to Cynthia, the dead man's daughter, against his will... he had also been head arguing moments before the fatal shot was heard. Cynthia is friends with reporter Roberta 'Bobbie' Logan and she calls in the detective Mr Wong to prove Dick's innocence. He soon finds another potential motive for murder; the ship was carrying a large number of Chinese bonds which have disappeared along with the passenger who was carrying them. There is also a disgruntled, recently sacked chauffeur and a Chinese servant who has disappeared to consider.With these films one has to accept having a Chinese character being played by an actor who clearly isn't Chinese... this isn't too difficult as apart from his name it is easy to forget where Mr Wong is meant to be from! The mystery is intriguing enough and there are a decent number of suspects to keep the viewer guessing right up until the final reveal. There is also a fair amount of humour; mostly due to policeman Capt. William Street being exasperated by Bobbie Logan; in a running gag the feather in her hat keeps poking him... silly but amusing. The cast are solid enough with Boris Karloff being reliable as Wong and Marjorie Reynolds putting in a spirited performance as Bobbie. Overall this is far from a classic but it is fun if you enjoy films of the era.

Michael_Elliott Doomed to Die (1940) ** (out of 4)A shipping tycoon has just lost a ship with four hundred people on it but he's more worried about the ship other than the people. Soon the jerk turns into a bigger jerk when his daughter's boyfriend comes to visit and ask for her hand in marriage. He refuses and moments later he's shot dead with the boyfriend being the only person in the room. Captain Street (Grant Withers) thinks he has an open and shut case but Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff) thinks there's something more going on.DOOMED TO DIE would turn out to be the fifth and final film where Karloff would play the Mr. Wong character. Monogram would continue the series for one more picture but Karloff wouldn't be in that one. As far as this film goes, it's pretty much a routine mystery picture with a couple decent performances but there's no question that there's nothing here that makes this stand out from the countless other detective movies out there.As I said with the previous four films, the cast are pretty good for the most part with Karloff once again doing fine in the role of Mr. Wong. I always liked the laid-back nature he brought to the character but, again, there's no doubt he didn't really try to make the character Asian. Withers is good in his role as the detective and Marjorie Reynolds brings some needed energy to the picture.The "B" nature is obvious throughout the film and it really appears as if Monogram cut the budget down even more. The first four movies were cheaply produced but this here seems like it had even less of a budget to work with. The story itself is just too routine and lacks any real drama to make the film better than it is.

secondtake 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.htmlTake them for what they are and you might end up watching all of them!

bkoganbing Doomed To Die is the last film that Boris Karloff made for Monogram's Mr. Wong series. One more film was made with an actual person of Oriental descent playing Wong and that was Keye Luke. The criticism of Mr. Wong is somewhat interesting. The criticism in fact of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto was that these two clever detectives were constantly speaking in fortune cookie aphorisms which led to stereotyping of Oriental characters. James Lee Wong was only of partial oriental ancestry and it's made clear that he went to both Oxford and Heidelberg universities. Obviously the Oxford speech pattern is what took and we get the clear diction of Boris Karloff instead.Wong's every bit as smart as Moto and Chan and he has to be here. It's your typical locked room mystery. Shipping magnate Guy Usher is concerned over both the shipboard fire of his vessel the Wentworth Castle and the romance between his daughter Catherine Craig and the son of rival shipper Melvin Lang. Usher is shot to death after a meeting with William Stelling, the fiancé of Craig and he's the only one in the room with the deceased.Some Chinese government bonds were stolen during the fire and remember this film is made during the Chinese-Japanese War that predated the beginning of World War II. Those Kuomintang bonds are valuable and they're reason enough for arson and murder. A Tong leader, Richard Loo, is also killed before the case is solved. Doomed To Die marked the farewell appearance of Marjorie Reynolds as well as Lois Lane snoop and scoop reporter girlfriend of police captain Grant Withers of the San Francisco Homicide Squad. A man never to proud to ask for the help of Mr. Wong. But in this case it turns out that Reynolds is a friend of Craig's and she brings Karloff and his super sleuthing skills to this case.Doomed To Die is a bit more complex than the usual run of films from Monogram Pictures which didn't exactly invest to many production values in the Wong series. Not that they had much to invest. I do enjoy seeing Karloff in the role though, pity he didn't do more of them.