Did someone say "More Mabuse"? I could've sworn I heard those words, echoing in my mind just above the conscious level. Was it you who said them? Or maybe it was the Mad Doctor himself, compelling me to watch the rest of his movies, but whatever the case, be it mind control or a sub-aural message........it worked. I found I suddenly needed More Mabuse indeed, so I Googled the next installment, saw that it was called "The Return of Dr. Mabuse"(1961) and discovered there was a print available on Youtube. Then I pressed "play".
Going in, I knew Fritz Lang was not involved. As mentioned in the last blog, "1000 Eyes" was both his last Mabuse and his final film, so I wasn't expecting another arty triumph. A new director was at the helm, one with a host of unknown German credits. As a Mabuse fan, I'd read years ago about the final set of post-Lang sequels, none of which was said to be very good. No one described them as garbage, either, just average fare, but because they were being compared to the early classics of the franchise (begun almost 40 years previous), they were given less-than-favorable treatment in the reviews I read. Consequently I never sought them out. But after we were pulled back in, as it were, by the actress Dawn Addams (and cue Al Pacino), and after "1000 Eyes" turned out to be as top notch as the first two movies, I figured I might as well keep going and give the other sequels a shot. Especially after I heard that Voice in my head.....("More Mabuse! Watch more Mabuse!")
And who can refuse the Mad Doctor? Not I, your Intrepid Reviewer, nor apparently a group of convicts, locked down in a Behr-LEEN prison. Let me explain.....
As "Return" opens, an Interpol agent is killed on a train. He'd been in Berlin, collecting evidence on a German mob link to the Syndicate in Chicago. Are the Mafia branching out, or is it something different? The Police Inspector is back (Gert Frobe from "1000 Eyes") and has his own suspicions, especially after a woman with Chi-town connections is murdered late one night after leaving a bar. The killers' method, using a truck equipped with a flamethrower, leads him to suspect an old foe, the mysterious Dr. Mabuse. The idea is cemented in his head after an investigator finds a book in the dead woman's coat, entitled "The Devil's Anatomy". Inside it's burned cover, the contents page reveals four chapters : "The Myth of Satan", "The Myth of Dracula", "The Wolfman Myth", and finally, "The Myth of Dr. Mabuse". Keep in mind that the Devil's greatest achievement is convincing us he doesn't exist, and there you have the purpose of the book, written by a local priest, who may or may not be complicit in the scheme.
Look......what's the deal already? Does Mabuse exist or doesn't he? And don't give The Inspector a lot of guff about how he "died" years ago. Frobe knows, from previous ex-schperience, that Mabuse never dies. That's why he's on par with The Wolfman, Dracula and Satan. So please stop selling him short, you investigators you! He ain't dead, gravestone or no gravestone. Inspector Frobe tries to keep this knowledge to himself to avoid disbelief among his colleagues, then sets out to solve the two murders.
This time, he has help from handsome Lex Barker, an American with multiple i.d.s : FBI agent, American tourist, Chicago mobster.
There's a ton of evil stuff going on, with prisoners turned into zombies via an inoculation process, where they are given shots that destroy their free will. This is presented by the prison warden as a vaccination against disease, but for Mabuse it's very effective when it comes to committing crimes, giving him an army of team players who don't ask questions......
His ultimate goal, after jailbreaking the prisoners, is to have them blow up a nearby nuclear power plant, which will trigger the end of the world. Though it doesn't match the artistry of it's Lang-directed predecessors, "The Return of Dr. Mabuse" still works as an effective crime thriller with demonic overtones. There is one glaring problem, however : there isn't much Mabuse! Holy smokes! I mean, he's continually talked about, and investigated by Frobe and Barker, but he's rarely onscreen, except in disguise. But that doesn't count because he's "disguised" as other characters. Still and all, I do recommend "Return", with Two Solid Thumbs Up, because of it's steady plot, always involving. /////
But wait! We aren't done yet because there's More Mabuse still! Unfortunately though, it's gonna become a little formulaic by the time we get to the next entry, "The Invisible Dr. Mabuse"(1962), which I watched last night. The same director is back (Harald Reinl), and while he's clearly a competent craftsman, in place to keep the franchise going and using a similar format to the one he utilised in "Return of Mabuse", he's lost much of the tension of that movie, which juggled several subthemes and kept the audience guessing. And even though Fritz Lang was long gone by then, and thus "Return" lacked his considerable artistic touches, it still had the traction of a tight crime thriller, even if there wasn't much Mabuse til the end. Part of the problem with "Invisible Mabuse" is that the inimitable Police Inspector is not on board. I didn't know this until I checked his IMDB, but by 1964, actor Gert Frobe would go on to portray "Goldfinger" in the Bond flick of the same name. Maybe he checked out of the Mabuse series to do that (and as an aside, it would be an adventure to try a pronunciation, Ad Style, of Frobe's last name, which has an umlaut over the "o". Just for a quickie, we could try Frrurrrb-ah, or maybe Frrairr-buh or just plain Frrurrb.) Umlauts are fun, in the same way as pronouncing "Oeuvre" is fun. :)
But at any rate, what you get in "Invisible Mabuse" is exactly what you might imagine : a take-off on "The Invisible Man", only with the Mad Mr. M on the rampage instead of Claude Rains. The trouble is that it's a paint-by-numbers affair. The movie opens inside a Berlin (pronun.) theater, where a disembodied pair of spyglasses watches the stage performance, a magic act featuring clowns and a beautiful actress, who is taken to the guillotine for the grand finale. Of course, it's all make believe and as the curtain opens for the encore, she's right there taking her bows. Invisible Mabuse can't get enough of her, or the show, and we see him - or rather just his binoculars - at several performances, night after night. The usual Unexplained Murders happen, but this time, as mentioned, there's no Gert Frobe to investigate. His presence carried a lot of weight in the two previous sequels, and while Alex Baldwin-lookalike Lex Barker returns as "Joe Como, FBI Agent", and does a decent job, he lacks the casual jocularity and hearty German-ness of Frobe, a cigar-chomping biggie who gave "Return" it's heart.
There is some interesting science in "Invisible Mabuse", such as when a physicist explains to Barker the wave theory behind the Doctor's invisibility. He draws the whole thing out on a chalkboard and his explanation is quite fascinating. I wish there had been a lot more scenes like this, instead of the numerous cuts of Barker running from place to place and the inevitable, forced romance with the movie's heroine (the stage actress). Also - once again there's not a lot of Mabuse. Wolfgang Preiss, the actor who plays him, must've had a contract stipulation that limited his screen time, because while he was all over the place in "1000 Eyes", he's barely there in "Return" and "Invisible", and Mabuse's presense is instead insinuated by "disguises", i.e. other characters. You're supposed to wonder, "Is it the physicist, or is it Mabuse? Is it the priest, or is it Mabuse?". This was okay, and fun, in "Return", but as I say, it becomes a formulaic plot device by the time we get to "Invisible".
And yet.......yet again I'm gonna give it a recommendation. "The Invisible Dr. Mabuse" earns Two Regular Thumbs Up, one rating down from "The Return of Dr. Mabuse", but still it squeaks by as a watchable b-grade thriller, and on it's interesting scientific qualities, including a "de-invisiblizing" finish. ////
That's all I've got for today. Believe it or not, there are still three more Mabuse sequels for us to wade through. They'll have to wait for several days, as I have library flicks to catch up on, but we'll get to 'em eventually. Have a wonderful afternoon, and tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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