Island of Doomed Men (1940)

Pretty Good

Best movie ever!

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Island Of Doomed Men has Peter Lorre in the lead as the lord and master of his own private island where he has convict labor assigned there and has them digging for diamonds. It doesn't look like the men are finding a lot of diamonds, but Lorre is sure living well, complete with trophy wife in Rochelle Hudson.In a rather stupidly handled plot Robert Wilcox plays a government agent sent to investigate. He's convicted on a real murder charge though. I attribute the clumsy handling to some bad editing.Not a great picture, but Lorre carries the whole thing with a Doctor Moreau like character. He may not be doing experiments on animals, but he's sure getting his jollies.Peter Lorre fans will like this.

With a title like that, and the prospect of Peter Lorre presiding over his own private island of slave labourers, you'd think this couldn't fail; but actually watching this movie is like watching paint dry. Glossily photographed by Benjamin Kline, the elegance of the home surrounded by an electrified fence that Lorre shares with his bored high maintenance wife Rochelle Hudson (probably standing sets from other productions) manages to make the film seem even more inert than it already does, since it makes what passes for action on his premises seem even more detached from the supposedly rugged desert island setting than already seemed possible. Although Lorre could in better films underplay very seductively, here he just looks bored, except whenever he sees George E. Stone's pet monkey, when he suddenly and abruptly goes berserk. Just as Clint Eastwood's mistreatment of Pamelyn Ferdin's pet turtle Randolph brought about his doom in Don Siegel's 'The Beguiled' (1971), so Lorre's Achilles' heel proves to be Stone's monkey.

If I have one problem with Island of Doomed Men, it's the complete lack of logic on display. Here's the storyline from the movie's main page on IMDb: "Sadistic Stephen Danel owns a penal island, and when he is not humiliating and mistreating his wife, he is torturing his convict prisoners and using them for slave labor. Government agent Mark Sheldon is sent to infiltrate the island and bring Danel to justice." There are a couple of glaring inaccuracies in this quote that go to my argument about a lack of logic.First, Stephen Danel is not torturing "convict prisoners". Instead, he is torturing parolees. Parolees would undoubtedly be missed. How Danel gets away with his operation without someone becoming wise to what he's doing defies all logic. Like I said, these are parolees. Some would presumably have families that would be outraged if their loved ones just disappeared after being paroled. Also, I'd think the U.S. prison system would do a better job of monitoring parolees. Sure, a few might fall through the cracks, but not the dozens Danel has gone through over the years.Second, Sheldon's plan to bring down Danel is so convoluted and illogical that it will make your head hurt if you think about it long enough. The quote makes it sound as if the Justice Department (or some other government agency) sent him to the island on a mission. Not true. Instead, to get to the island, Sheldon allowed himself to be convicted of a murder he didn't commit, serve a whole year in jail, and have himself conveniently paroled into Danel's custody. What a ridiculous plan! Sheldon's predecessor appeared to have enough information on Danel to justify a search warrant. When Sheldon was arrested, why not come forward with that information instead of going through the ridiculous steps he took to get to Danel? Utterly illogical.If it weren't for Peter Lorre's performance, some decent tension in the film's finale, and Rochelle Hudson, I'd easily rate this one much lower.

Peter Lorre is perfect in this role, a calm, controlling madman with a terrifying temper bubbling underneath. Flashes of his temper are the highlights of the movie. Whomever played his wife could've probably been out-acted by a beanbag, but she's pretty, so it's ok. The other main man was okay, and I was rooting for him like I was supposed to. I guess the underlying question is: Could an island of slavery actually exist? Just kidding. The movie is not that deep, or worthy of further thought. The underlying question actually is: What does Peter Lorre have against monkeys?