German police inspector Gert Frobe is assigned to investigate the murder of a courier who was transporting evidence against an American criminal organization called “the Syndicate”. Despite the lack of any apparent connection Frobe almost immediately suspects the crime was commissioned by the mysterious Dr Mabuse -- a mentalist and criminal mastermind who was presumed dead years earlier. Frobe’s hunch is verified when his investigation takes him to a local church where the bad doctor (still unseen) starts issuing cryptic warnings through the public address system.
Other brazen murders (including one committed by flamethrower) put Frobe on the trail of a sophisticated gang that appears to be operating out of “cell block D” at the local penitentiary. Soon, an FBI agent and a pretty young journalist join the investigation as well. By pretending to send the FBI agent to prison on a trumped up conviction, they infiltrate the organization and learn that the evil Mabuse plans to use an army of prisoners under the influence of mind-control drugs to sow mayhem and destruction throughout the world. Frobe and friends must stop the first plot to blow up an atomic power plant and unmask Mabuse before it’s too late.
Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller
Is it any good?
Dr Mabuse is practically unknown in the United States, but the character is reportedly a horror phenomenon on par with Dracula or Frankenstein in parts of Europe. Approximately ten Mabuse movies were produced over a span of five decades -- starting with a couple of Fritz Lang films in the 1920s and 1930s, and the rest following mostly in the 1960s. I’ve seen six of the Mabuse films so far and I would describe myself as a fan, but even I am not totally clear on exactly what the attraction is. One thing I am sure of is that Dr Mabuse is far more than the sum of his parts, so any single Mabuse movie (except perhaps the original four-hour silent epic MABUSE THE GAMBLER) is likely to be disappointing taken in isolation.
THE RETURN OF DR MABUSE isn’t even the best of the 1960s Mabuse flicks, but it follows pretty closely the pattern for the movies. Step one: Murder! Step two: An investigator (preferably a character or actor who has appeared in previous installments) irrationally suspects Mabuse despite having no evidence. Step three: Everyone else points out that Mabuse is dead. Step four: Mabuse reveals himself unnecessarily by issuing warnings. Step five: Mabuse’s plan to sow anarchy throughout the world using some sci-fi contraption is foiled. Step six: Mabuse is unmasked, revealing he is some character from earlier in the movie, and he escapes to plot another day. There are other elements that recur time and time again: masks, facial disfigurements, disembodied voices, player pianos, wooden legs, hidden surveillance, faked deaths, switched identities, mind control, the use of numbers instead of names, and even a group of actors (including Gert Frobe, Wolfgang Preiss, Peter van Eyck, and Werner Peters) who each appear in several different roles throughout the franchise.
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Taken individually, the movies are often confusing, weird, unsatisfying, cliched, or some mixture thereof. They feel like second-rate procedurals or thrillers where people behave irrationally for the sake of twists, and where everybody’s plans are far more complicated than they need to be. The plots are difficult to follow, the characters are simply puppets acting for or against Mabuse, and the movies often lapse into dullness. And, seemingly worst of all, Mabuse is forever a cipher. He only appears in the final moments of the movie when he is finally unmasked -- otherwise he’s reduced to simply barking orders or threats from behind concealment. But strangely, as the series goes on and the movies reinforce each other, they acquire this weirdly compelling symbolic dimension. The recycled actors, characters, situations, themes, and objects give them a dreamlike, half-remembered quality. They all blend together effortlessly into a single plotless and surreal entity. More than once I’ve had nagging recollections of some mythical Mabuse movie that I could swear I’ve seen, but turns out to be simply something my memory has assembled from pieces borrowed from all the others.
In this hazy blend, Mabuse actually somehow becomes a compelling character (or at least a compelling concept). He is literally evil incarnate -- he has no motives, no objectives, no personality, and he seeks nothing more than to plunge the world into chaos and anarchy. As such, it’s fitting that he is often hunted down by simple lawmen. Mabuse’s foils are usually ordinary homicide detectives or FBI agents -- schlubby guys who doggedly work leads and follow hunches and put clues together. It’s also interesting that these guys are always irrationally obsessed with Mabuse, as though they have some ancestral memory and hatred of him that drives them to track him down even when everyone else is convinced he’s only a myth. Mabuse always executes his diabolical schemes through agents (usually controlled by hypnotism or some similar method) while he himself remains obscured in the shadows, and at the end he’s always revealed to be another character in disguise just before escaping the clutches of the law at the last moment. It’s a weirdly faithful retelling of the same story, very similar to other deathless franchises like Frankenstein or Dracula or Godzilla that revisit the same territory again and again and again. In the case of Mabuse, the story about the tendency of evil to emerge precisely when we think it’s been destroyed, the way it hides itself within seemingly good men, and the need for ordinary folks to be diligent in rooting it out whenever it arises.
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If anybody is interested in the Dr Mabuse movies, I would suggest starting with one of the three that Fritz Lang made. At four hours long, the silent MABUSE THE GAMBLER is like the rest of the series in microcosm: by the time it’s over, you’ve forgotten where it began and all that remains is an impression. It’s also the movie where Mabuse is most developed as a villain. Meanwhile, THE TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE (1933) sets some of the template for the movies to come. In an attempt to ground Mabuse in the real world, Lang pits him against the Inspector Lohmann character from M (1931) even as Mabuse develops fantastic plots to overthrow the rule of law in the world. Finally, in THE 1,000 EYES OF DR MABUSE (1960), Lang introduces many more elements -- including several actors -- who would recur repeatedly in many of the other Mabuse movies of the sixties.
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