everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This about sums up what there is of a plot. "Mr. Wong and a girl reporter investigate a shipping magnate's murder. " BUT there is more. It's got lots of atmosphere... foggy nights and dimly lit buildings. It's got Karloff as University educated Mr. Wong. It's got a collection of stereo-typically Hollywood variety Chinese. It's got a funny girl reporter and a rather clueless cop who banter back and forth in really snappy dialogue. She wears an astonishing variety of hats including one with a particularly annoying feather. It's got plot holes galore and things get rather confusing here and there but in the end it doesn't matter one iota .. it was a fun movie and it has the voice of the Grinch .. who can ask for anything more ?

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.

"When 'The Wentworth Castle' (a ship) catches ablaze, killing numerous people, shipping tycoon Cyrus Wentworth is distraught over the loss, and is found shot dead in his office. Dick Fleming is the prime suspect in the mind of the none-to-bright (sic) police captain Bill Street. Dick is a business rival, and happens to be in love with Wentworth's daughter Cynthia. When cub reporter Bobbie Logan puts Mr. Wong on the case, the result is a foregone conclusion," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.Boris Karloff politely bows out of the lackluster "Mr. Wong" series, after this entry.This time, as always, Wong uses his wiser "oriental mind" to unravel a mystery that nobody else can see (don't bother trying to solve it at home; there really isn't a solvable mystery to be found). Cute and bubbly Marjorie Reynolds (as Bobbie Logan) does appear. So does Grant Withers (as Bill Street), who, as Ms. Logan notes, "always arrests the wrong man." The film makes good use of stock footage. The uncredited cast is good; for example, catch Angelo Rossitto as a newsboy in the opening, and Gibson Gowland as the doctor who treats Karloff's "flesh wound".** Doomed to Die (1940) William Nigh ~ Boris Karloff, Marjorie Reynolds, Grant Withers

**SPOILERS** Last of Monograms James Lee Wong detective series with the great Boris Karloff playing the witty and preceptive Chinese sleuth. Wong gets involved in the mass murder of some 400 passengers of a cruise ship to cover up an illegal bond smuggling operation. Nowhere as good as the much better Charlie Chan detectives movies that James Lee Wong was an obvious spin off from but Karloff, as James Lee Wong, gives the series that class that it needs to make it at least watchable.As the president of the shipping company that owns the cruise ship Wentworth Castle Paul Wentworth realizes that he's been unknowingly involved in illegal bond smuggling and that his flagship, the Wentworth Castle, was sabotaged in order to cover that fact up, from the Maritime Commission and FBI. Wentworth is suddenly confronted by his rival in the shipping business Paul Fleming, who came over to Wentworth's office to offer his sympathies. This leads to a violent argument over Wenthworths son Dick's involvement with Fleming's daughter Cynthia.It turns out that Dick Fleming is in love with Wentworth's daughter Cynthia and wants her hand in marriage which the mad as hell Paul Wentworth, who feels that Fleming is trying to take over his shipping company, is totally against. In no time at all with young Dick showing, as his father left, up to talk some sense into the crazy old Wentworth's head there's a shot heard, off camera, and before you know it Wentworth is dead as a door nail! Dick is seen fleeing from his office and suspected by the police for Wentworth's murder.Seeing enough of these kind of films you just know that Dick is innocent but the cop on the scene, a captain no less, Bill Street in convinced that Dick is the killer For the rest of the movie Street makes a complete jerk of himself trying to prove it with all the evidence to Paul Wentworth's murder showing that it was someone else. Capt. Street is also hampered by this nosy and pesky reporter Bobbie Logan who, unlike him, feels that Dick didn't do it and in the end has the by them embarrassed cop, after being shown how completely wrong he was, forced to eat his hat with a little salt and pepper sprinkled on it to give it some taste.Wong who comes on the scene late in the film is convinced that, like everyone in the audience, Dick is innocent which leads the real killer to take aim on him wounding Wong when he's out on the street looking for evidence in the case. It turns out that a passenger on the cruise ship, Kia Ling who survived, which the unlucky 400 others didn't, was involved in this smuggling operating of illegal bonds. Kia after being discovered by Wong and Capt. Street in his dockside home murdered it's also discovered that he isn't Kia Ling who we and Det. Wong were lead to believe but Mr. Wentworth's Chinese houseboy and all around handyman Lem Hou!Hou had been working with someone very close to the late Mr. Wentworth in the smuggling operation and was himself knocked off when the real Mr. Big got a bit paranoid and wanted no one to be around to be able to finger him for one of the largest mass murder in US crime history. He didn't at all expect that Chinese/American super-sleuth James Lee Wong was to be put on the case by the Flemings. When Wong finally went to work to get Paul Fleming's son Dick off it was just a matter of time before the real killer of Paul Wentworth was apprehended. That is if the killer didn't get, or murder, James Lee Wong first.