User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Boris Karloff is Mr. Wong (for the last time) in "Doomed to Die," a 1940 B movie. I find these films much less successful than Charlie Chan or his Japanese counterpart, Mr. Moto.

Taping someone's eyes to give them a slight Oriental slant does not a Chinese make, and Boris Karloff is decidedly not Chinese. He's as English as Big Ben. If the makeup were better, his British accent would have worked well, as Chan's speech especially was always stereotypical Of course, the best thing would have been to hire someone Chinese for the role, which they did later on when Keye Luke was cast in "Phantom of Chinatown." Karloff's Wong has a nice laugh and a good sense of humor. He's called in by reporter Bobbie Logan (Marjorie Reynolds) to help out when her friend Catherine Wentworth's fiancé is accused of murdering his future father-in-law, shipping magnate Cyrus Wentworth. One of Wentworth's ships has just suffered a fire, killing many people. Also distressing Wentworth is his daughter's romance with the son of a rival.

While Catherine's fiancé, Dick Fleming, is arguing with Wentworth in his office, a shot rings out. When people respond, they find Fleming is gone and Wentworth is dead. Ultimately, Fleming is accused of the crime, and it's up to Mr. Wong and Captain Street (Dick Withers) to figure out what happened.

"Doomed to Die" was made during the Chinese-Japanese war, pre-World War II. It turns out that Kuomintang bonds had been smuggled out of China on the doomed ship to keep them safe. This suggests arson on the ship. With the murder of a Tong leader later on, there is more to this case than an unhappy fiancé.

Pretty good story with Captain Street and Bobbie Logan continuing their hatred for one another, which really peps up this film as it did "The Fatal Hour." They are really funny and the best thing about these films. Karloff is very good and gives an intelligent performance.

Entertaining, if not the greatest.

For the fifth and last time, the great Boris Karloff portrays the oriental super-detective James Lee Wong who effortlessly solves the murder cases for which his police colleague Capt. Street (Grant Withers) always manages to arrest the wrong guy. Cyrus Wentworth, the magnate of a giant shipping company has been shot in his office and the obvious suspect is the young Dick Fleming, who's both the son of Cyrus' biggest business rival AND the forbidden lover of his daughter. The always-meddling reporter Miss Logan asks Wong to investigate the case and he naturally discovers that Wentworth had a lot more enemies who wanted him death, like relatives of victims who were recently killed in a shipping accident or former employees who attempted to blackmail him. The story opens downright terrific, with a great characterization of Cyrus Wentworth and his possible assassins. After about 15 minutes, Boris Karloff walks in and from that moment on he monopolizes all the attention! Of course Wong foresees the killer's every possible move and of course he always is several steps ahead of Capt. Street's investigation. Normally this exaggerated amount of 'cleverness' would annoy me tremendously; but Karloff's performance is so good and the script is so light-headed that you easily forgive all the illogicalness. The dialogues are wit and often humorous (the constant arguments of reporter Logan and police Capt. Street) and the sequences set in Chinatown are atmospheric, as usual. "Doomed to Die" is a very cheap but worthwhile thriller, especially recommended to fans of well-structured detective films and admirers of the almighty Boris Karloff. One more Wong-movie got released after this, made by a different director and not starring Karloff.

Monogram Studios only made a few Mr. Wong films and after seeing a few I can certainly understand why. Despite having Boris Karloff in the lead, the films are incredibly dry and unexciting B-detective films. Unlike Charlie Chan (who, by the way, is being "knocked off" by the Wong films), Sherlock Holmes, The Falcon and other B-series detectives, there is so little energy in the Wong films that it's hard to care about them. Part of this is due to Karloff's odd characterization. The guy is supposed to be Chinese but sounds like,...Boris Karloff! And, despite the makeup, he actually looks just like Boris Karloff with a greasy wig! While the Chan characterizations were NOT politically correct, the character at least cracked some jokes and seemed interesting. Wong is just dull. And to make matters worse, he really never got a decent sidekick. The closest thing to it was a pushy and occasionally obnoxious reporter who tended to provide less comic relief and more irritation. So as a result of these factors, the chemistry just wasn't there.

In this film, the plot involves the death of a shipping magnate or something but I really found I didn't care. After a while, I found my attention waning and I just wanted it to end. The film was pretty much as you might expect with few, if any, surprises. Trust me--there ARE much better films of this style out there waiting to be seen. Don't give up the search!

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.

Another routine Poverty Row potboiler enlivened by a few moments of unintentional(?) humour - just how IS one supposed to keep a straight face when our copper hero rushes off to "pick up" a character from "Queen Street" on the San Francisco waterfront? - and a classic bad lighting moment when, as two people enter a dimly lit room at night, the lights "outside" the window go off before the lights inside the room are switched on. Presumably if both sets of lights were on at the same time the camera would have seen the studio wall where there should have been empty space.

It strains the credibility somewhat that our Ace "Chinese Copper" Mr Wong can enter a darkened room through a fire escape window and not notice either the gun wielding bad guy standing next to him or the burning paper in the fireplace.

As far as mystery B-movies go, you cant go "Wong" with this one. Karloff returns once again as the famous Chinese detective James Lee Wong to solve the murder of a shipping tycoon. What seems like an open and shut case to Capt. Street (Grant Withers) quickly becomes a web of deceit, lies and murder! I've only seen two Wong films, this and "The Fatal Hour", but I really enjoyed them both, largely due to Capt. Street and his "sidekick" reporter Bobbie Logan. The banter between them is cliché, but often pretty funny anyway. They have great chemistry together on screen. Karloff is, of course, great as Wong. I loved his entrances from the most unlikely places, such as windows or fire escapes. The plot was pretty straight forward, though it was full of red-herrings and false suspects that made the conclusion a bit hard to guess. Not that that's a bad thing mind you, I quite enjoyed the ending. To sum up, I recommend this as well as the slightly better "Fatal Hour" as two of the best mystery B-movies you'll find out there.

8/10

I can imagine kids watching this on a Saturday afternoon in the 1940's. Karloff as the Chinese detective again. He is the only stabilizing factor in these dullards. I saw one before. It has the huffy police detective and his nemesis, a female reporter who won't stop talking or screaming. Always after a "scoop." This is the investigation of a murder with a few twists and turns, which works a little better than some of the others in the series. A few red herrings are thrown in. Wong seems to know what's going on, but no one else does. The young hero, accused of murdering his future father-in-law, takes a big chance and almost blows it. But Karloff saves the day. There are a couple of interesting characters,including an ex-con chauffeur and a blackmailing competitor to the murder victim. There's also part of the Tong war going on in the city, and Karloff is shot when he gets in the middle of it. I saw it. I doubt I will ever see it again.

Minor whodunit, where headliner Wong (Karloff) makes what amounts to just a token appearance, while the main sleuthing is done by Street and Bobbie. In fact the 60-minutes succeeds more for its humorous moments than for its murky mystery. Actors Withers and Reynolds make for an amusing sleuthing team when trading snappy lines at each other; that is, when Reynolds deadly feathered hat isn't skewering Withers first. Good thing the talented Reynolds injects real spunk amidst the gloomy surroundings. My guess is the lighting bill came to about a buck eighty, but then this is a Monogram production. And, oh yeah, the mystery concerns a sunken ocean liner and who killed the liner's owner. It appears a cut-and-dried case against the man who was with the victim in a closed room when he was shot, but is it. Too bad the follow-up is so murky. All in all, tune in only if a few chuckles will suffice for a slow evening.

(In passing- According to IMDB, the ship burning at the beginning is the Morro Castle, a 1934 disaster that killed many and is still listed among the most infamous sea calamities.)

Mr Wong returns in another murder mystery! This time, a wealthy shipping magnate is trying to cope with the burning of one of his ships which has caused the deaths of hundreds of people, when he's shot and killed in his office. Mr Wong's got his work cut out for him this time, as Detective Street thinks he's already got the culprit – the son of the businessman's rival who was in the office about ten seconds before the guy got shot. We all know that's too easy, right? You've got all manner of suspects here, from the shady business partner, the lawyer, the rival or even the weird guy who keeps handing around on the fire escape. With plucky female journalist on hand, Wong sets out to get his man.

While not as good as the other Wong film I've seen (The Fatal Hour), Doomed to Die still holds its own. It takes a while to get going, but once Wong starts doing his investigations, things pick up a bit. He visits the local Tong, gets shot at, discover secret passageways and a corpse, and generally runs rings around everyone else in the film. I wouldn't like to say too much without giving away the plot, mind you. It's just what it is, a solid mystery film that won't take up too much of your time. I quite like the way that Karloff, although playing a Chinese guy, doesn't overdo it and carries Wong with a certain quiet dignity.

Boris Karloff stars in film five of the Mr. Wong series playing the reserved, brilliant, and refined Chinese American detective James Lee Wong. Amusing banter, incompetent police, and a typical murder mystery that only Wong can solve complete the formula for this very average film. Not sure why this is labeled a FILM NOIR by IMDB, because the other Wong films aren't.

Yes, it's the standard 1940's mystery potboiler with borrowed clips from other 'Wong' films, and it's a bit tough following just who did what to who when...but the opening sequences depicting the burned ship 'Wentworth Castle' are actually newsreel sequences of the burned 'Morro Castle', which caught fire on September 9, 1934. She was truly a ship of mystery for her last cruise -- her captain died of a heart attack in his bathtub aboard ship the previous evening. Early the next morning, a fire spread quickly out of control as the first mate tried to move the ship to ease the effects of the wind -- yet no orders were given to send an SOS. The radio operator sent out one on his own initiative, just a few minutes before the ship lost power. She drifted and beached herself at Asbury Park NJ, where the gutted hulk came to rest only a few feet from the famed Boardwalk, making a gruesome tourist attraction. Heavy rumors of cowardice were laid on the crew -- of the first 98 people in lifeboats, 92 of them were crew members. 137 passengers and crew died in the tragedy.

i'm not sure quite where to go on this one folks,, i'm a die hard Karloff fan but watching him as a Chinese detective, well let's just say very painful for me to watch,, I haven't seen any other the other detective Wong movies, and i'm pretty sure I don't want to, i'm sure this is not the worst movie ever made, by far Karloff did have a few good lines, and the plot wasn't so bad, I sat thru it I guess waiting to see the old classic boris Karloff and I guess that's the main reason why I was so disappointed, I wander why he took the roles in the first place , because he was so much better in the classic horror films,, don't know why this one was in the wal mart pack under horror movies,, this is obviously crime drama, and not horror. overall it wasn't that bad if you can distance yourself from Karloff being a Chinese detective, and obviously I couldn't do that, so that's why I was disappointed in the film as a whole.

The Mr Wong series with Boris Karloff are not exactly great films(none are bad though) but they still make for decent entertainment, and Doomed to Die is no exception to that. In personal opinion it is one of the weaker entries in the series, the weakest being Mr Wong in Chinatown and the best being The Mystery of Mr Wong, but that is not knocking it really. It does get convoluted in places and plods a little towards the end, while the editing could have been smoother and Grant Withers seems to think that shouting equals good acting, in my book it's overkill and it's distracting. However, the sets and lighting do provide some good atmosphere, and as ever the music is eerie and jaunty. The story is routine and has convoluted moments in the second half around when Wong narrowly escapes being shot(the most suspenseful Doomed to Die gets), but on the most part it goes along at a snappy pace and you are kept guessing, the final reveal is unexpected and the perpetrator is fairly calculating, one you don't want to mess with. I also found much pleasure in the script, the banter between Marjorie Reynolds and Withers is deliciously witty and the police interrogations here are just as funny. The acting is fairly good, the support cast are more than competent but never really rise above being solid support. Marjorie Reynolds delights once again as the sassy reporter, her rapport with Withers does manage to gel. But the film belongs to Boris Karloff(the best make-up also of the series is in Doomed to Die), even if he doesn't exactly convince as a Chinese and Mr Wong is not one of his best roles admittedly he is still enigmatic and seems to be enjoying himself. Mr Wong has a fair sprinkle of fun moments that despite his late entrance ensures that his presence is a long way from a waste. All in all, unexceptional but still entertaining. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff) investigates the murder of a shipping tycoon and a plot about contraband bonds. Returning are supporting players Grant Withers as Police Captain Bill Street and Marjorie Reynolds as reporter Bobbie Logan. The character of Bobbie Logan and her dynamic with Bill Street are pretty much ripped-off from the Torchy Blane movie series, which was generally superior to Mr. Wong. This is the last of the Mr. Wong movies Boris Karloff would be in. It suffers from typically cheap Monogram production values and a predictable story. But it does have the always-brilliant Boris Karloff, which is nothing to shrug at. Karloff's Wong films were watchable but forgettable. If you haven't seen a lot of other (better) B detective series, you might enjoy the Wong films more. But I've seen pretty much all of the them, certainly all of the major ones, and Mr. Wong sadly does not stand up well. That's not the fault of Boris Karloff, however, so if you're a fan of his I would certainly recommend you check this series out.