This was a bit of find, a really good ‘prison island’ type movie made in 1940 with some brilliant acting from the late great Peter Lorre. Mr Lorre plays Denel the sadistic owner of a private island that he has converted into a prison camp to provide labour for his diamond mine.

The plot revolves around an FBI agent named Mark Sheldon and played by Robert Wilcox who is sent undercover to investigate a suspected slave racket. Sheldon was sent to meet another agent working in the field and he is told by one of his superiors before he left that ‘Lincoln freed the slaves, but some people are still in that business’.

Sheldon meets his fellow agent but the agent is shot dead during the meeting. Sheldon, acting upon instructions from his bosses, refuses to give his real name and just calls himself ‘John Smith’. He gets convicted of the fellow agent’s murder and is in time sent to the titular ‘Island of Doomed Men’.

When Sheldon gets there after Denel persuades parole staff who are unaware of Denel’s slave island, that he can help ‘Mr Smith’, he finds out that he has been sent to the very place that he was tasked with investigating. The problem for Sheldon is can he survive the brutal island and escape to tell his tale and bring Denel to justice?

A great film that I enjoyed and I hope you enjoy it too