Mabuse Lives!
Dr Mabuse at CCC: 1960–1964
directed by Fritz Lang, Harald Reinl
starring Gert Frobe, Karin Dor, Lex Barker
Eureka
Although they are mostly forgotten today, the Dr. Mabuse films from Germany were hugely influential and massively popular in the early 1960s. The series cross-pollinated with the early years of the James Bond films, and the DNA of the Mabuse cycle is all over the 1960s swinging spy craze, from 007 to The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and countless Eurocult spy films throughout the 1960s. The character dates back to silent films but keeps coming back, with films still being made about the not-so-good doctor in the 21st century. Despite their limited budgets, the Dr. Mabuse films of this era deliver pulpy fun with unapologetic zeal. The six films made between 1960 and 1964 by CCC Film make up the new Mabuse Lives! Blu-ray box set from Eureka.
In 1933, director Fritz Lang (Metropolis) resurrected the character of Dr. Mabuse, over a decade after his two-part silent epic, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922). The Testament of Dr. Mabuse continues the story of the power-mad criminal genius. 1933 was also the year Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany, and very soon Fritz Lang would flee to America, leaving his home and the film industry he was a titan of behind for nearly 30 years.
In the aftermath of World War II, there was no film industry in Germany. The allied occupying forces were understandably nervous about allowing film production, knowing what a strong part movies were in the Nazi propaganda machine. Eventually the industry began to reform, and one of the leading players in the revitalization of German film was producer Artur Brauner, founder of CCC Film. He wanted to not only make movies, but also restore some of the cinematic culture that had been destroyed in the fascism, as well as somehow lure Fritz Lang back to Germany. With the character of Dr. Mabuse, Brauner was able to do both.
In 1960, Fritz Lang returned to Germany to make The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse. Inspired by the burgeoning television industry, the film was deliberately styled like a TV production. It helped get the low-budget film made, but also worked thematically, as Mabuse uses video surveillance to spy on the guests in the Luxor Hotel, where the bulk of the action in the film takes place. The result is a paranoid and claustrophobic thriller that was perfectly tuned for a nation still coming to terms with its Nazi past while also dealing with the Soviet Union literally dividing the nation. With Gert Frobe, Dawn Adams, and Peter von Eyck leading the cast, duplicity is the order of the day, and virtually no one in the film is who they appear to be — and the few who are, with the exception of Howard Vernon’s ultra-cool assassin, prove to be mostly well-intentioned but feckless pawns, easily manipulated by the evil genius of Dr. Mabuse, who is not even the actual Dr. Mabuse. His work finished, Fritz Lang left CCC and Germany to return to America, where his failing eyesight would end his career, and 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse would be his final film.
The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse was a hit, and over the next four years, Brauner and CCC would produce five more monochrome thrillers about the shadowy evil genius, Dr. Mabuse. To continue the series, Brauner poached director Harald Reinl, who had launched the Krimi cycle of films based on the novels of Edgar Wallace at rival Rialto Film. The infusion of the Krimi into Dr. Mabuse allowed the films to move beyond the cramped paranoid vision of Lang into even more raucous and crowd-pleasing fare.
The Return of Dr. Mabuse sees Gert Frobe reappear, but his character has changed from Inspector Kras to Inspector Lohmann, and he is teamed up with former Tarzan actor Lex Barker, playing an FBI agent who is undercover as an American gangster impersonating an FBI agent, who eventually goes undercover in a prison to help stop Mabuse’s mind-controlled army of prisoners from destroying a nuclear power plant. The mismatched buddy-cop energy of Frobe and Barker is terrific and really helps carry the film.
Gert Frobe sits out The Invisible Dr. Mabuse, so Lex Barker shoulders the load, returning as Joe Como. Director Harald Reinl returns, with his wife Karin Dor playing the daughter of a scientist who is trying to keep his invisibility device out of the hands of Mabuse, marking the series’ hard lean into science fiction that makes the whole affair even more wonderful and weird. Speaking of wonderful and weird, there is also a malevolent clown who sports very normal, non-evil clown makeup, which is a welcome relief from the current trope of evil clowns wearing absurdly creepy faces. Reinl makes great use of atmospheric locations in this film, including a grand theater and a secluded country inn, where he stages a rather effective fight between our hero Joe Como and and invisible man, ultimately using steam to make his opponent visible.
For the fourth film, it becomes remake time, so the thankless task of remaking Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse falls to director Werner Klingler, who makes a fun film, but the whole thing is overshadowed by the spectre of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece. This time, Gert Frobe is back, but Lex Barker has moved on from the series. The film was a bit of a misstep, and CCC would lean hard into the Krimi world, with the outlandish final films of the cycle: Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse and The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse.
For the final films, Frobe and Barker would be replaced by Peter van Eyck (who was the nominal lead in 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) as Scotland Yard investigator/spy Major Bill Tern, or Bob Anders depending on the film. Based on an Edgar Wallace story, Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse finds Mabuse in possession of a mind-control device, which he uses to make upstanding citizens commit crimes that they later cannot remember. He even manages to turn Klaus Kinski to the dark side, at least for a while.
With his plans thwarted in a huge gun battle, Mabuse returns for the final time at CCC in The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse, which sees Major Bob Anders undercover on a small island, where seemingly everyone on the island is an agent working undercover, leading to serious confusion for Peter Van Eyck’s Bob Anders and the audience. The film starts out conventionally enough but quickly descends into delightful incoherence, as events continue to happen for reasons that no one can explain and characters are so deep undercover they don’t even know who they are supposed to be. It is a mad mess of a film that is also utterly captivating and entertaining — because of its lack of lucidity, not in spite of it.
Mabuse Lives collects the six CCC Mabuse films along with a plethora of extras, including a terrific booklet of photos and writings from Holger Haase, Lotte Eisner, Tim Bergfelder, David Cairns, and even Fritz Lang himself. There is a banger half-hour video essay titled Kriminology by David Cairns and Fiona Watson and detailed film introductions by film critic and historian Tim Lucas, along with audio commentaries on each film by David Kalat. For one critic to do commentaries on six films without them getting overly repetitive is impressive, and Kalat pulls off the feat, delivering unique and insightful tracks for each film and spreading the love for this largely neglected period in German cinema.
