Make up your mind already!

There's a pleasing, mutually-negating symmetry to the titles of these next two films.  Though they have little in common except low budgets (and battiness), how could we not review them together?

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Doomed to Die (1940)

Grade: C

Adequate entry in the Mr. Wong series, with Boris Karloff as the (ahem) "Chinese" detective.  Faced with a seemingly open-and-shut murder case, Mr. Wong unravels a tangled conspiracy that unexpectedly (but, for the viewer, unsurprisingly) connects to the terrible maritime tragedy with which the film begins.



If you have expectations before viewing Doomed to Die, it's very likely to meet them.  (One exception: the silly title, which implies a far more ominous affair than what we get.)

It's got all the requisites: the spunky female reporter and the prickly police captain ("This female reporter's driving me batty!")...



...the irascible old businessman, and his shifty-eyed subordinate...



...and the imperturbable thug who, when threatened with prison, still won't cooperate with the police.  So, naturally, they let him go.



The plot is surprisingly intricate, and we're still not 100% sure if it all makes sense (especially the cui bono aspect).  Some dull stretches, and a cardboard supporting cast, keep the whole thing from being any better than average.

But as we've seen many a time in The Box, average isn't so bad.

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Condemned to Live (1935)

Grade: C



If you get a feeling of déjà vu while watching Condemned to Live, it's not just you: it's practically a remake of 1932's The Vampire Bat.  It even recycles the earlier film's sets and soundtrack, though not its distinctive dance.



Yet Condemned to Live is clearly the better movie, in part because it manages the rare feat of being a horror story with no real villain.  Oh, sure, there's a vampire of sorts, but he's about the nicest vampire you can imagine (when he's not tearing people's throats out, that is).



And the movie's love triangle is played with nary a hint of melodrama.  Instead of rage, recriminations, and pained expressions, the three characters involved actually treat each other humanely and compassionately (when one of them isn't trying to tear another's throat out, that is).



Of course there are lulls, draggy bits, and schlocky moments.  But Condemned to Live somehow taps a vein (!) that, outside of a few standouts like Frankenstein, has been explored all too seldom by horror movies: the horror-tragedy genre.

In Condemned to Live, awful things happen to nice people through no fault of their own, and the film doesn't wrap their suffering up in a neat moral package to make us feel smug about ourselves.  There's no fatal flaw, no moment of hubris or duplicity: simply a case of shit happens, flows downhill, and thereby gets poo on everyone.