Mabuse Lives! – Eureka

Directors: Fritz Lang, Harold Reinl, Werner Klingler, Paul May and Hugo Fregonese
Starring: Wolfgang Preiss, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe
Country: Germany
Running Time: 549 min (total)
Year: 1960-64
BBFC Certificate: 12

After releasing the earlier works of Fritz Lang, Eureka! are delving into not only his last film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1961), but the five sequels that are part of the German pulp boom of the 60s. These films were made by Artur Brauner, head of German popular movie studio CCC, intended a. to help his hero Lang and also to cash in on rivals Constantin/Rialto’s series of Edgar Wallace films. Thus they combine two eras of German genre film into a series of entertaining packages.

A sumptuous spy epic, The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1961) was something of a passion project for producer/Fritz Lang fanboy Artur Brauner, who having worked with his hero on The Indian Tomb/The Tiger of Eschnapur (1958), A rather late entry in the series of films about the danger of television, it is set atmospherically in pre-wall Berlin.

A reporter dies on his way to work. Inspector Kras (Gert Frobe) gets a call from the mysterious fortune teller Peter Cornelius (a name ), meanwhile American Henry Travers (Peter Van Eyck) finds himself in the former Nazi Luxor spy hotel, meeting Marian (Dawn Addams), who is pursued by her vile club-footed husband, Mistelzweig (Werner Peters). Along the way, we meet various characters, all of whom could be the newly revived Dr Mabuse. Is it Reinhard Kolldehoff? Howard Vernon (who had he not met Fritz Lang so late, probably would have been Mabuse)? Or is it one of the several characters played by Wolfgang Preiss? Err.. SPOILER – Yes. Although this Mabuse at first isn’t the real Mabuse but a pretender, this is later retconned.

It’s a pulp delight with a solid character cast of familiar Euro-faces, one that has the virtuoso technique of Lang combined with the Edgar Wallace krimi.

The sequels are pulpier, more krimi-adjacent fare. Lang is replaced by kirmi vet Harald Reinl amongst others.

The Return of Dr Mabuse (1961) retains Preiss, Frobe, Werner Peters and adds Daliah Lavi (a Eurospy staple), ex-Tarzan Lex Barker (soon to enshrine proto-Hasselhoff levels of godhood in Germany as Old Shatterhand), and the Tor Johnson-looking wrestler Ady Berber. It feels slightly prescient, with Mabuse portrayed at times as a black silhouetted figure on television, a la Blofeld. And is an entertaining runaround, though Preiss is offscreen for most of the film.

The Invisible Dr Mabuse (1962) features Barker, Preiss, Peters and Dor again. It is the one set at a variety show (Wallace films of this era tend to have lots of scenes in a weird German idea of London clubland), and aside from the sci-fi elements, with its old manor plot, it’s very Wallace. It is also fun that the Metropol Theatre, later the setting of Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) is here the villain’s lair.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1962) is an okay remake/sequel of the 1933 original, but it lacks imagination. It does have an interesting cast – Preiss, Frobe, Senta Berger, Walter Rilla as the latest vessel of Mabuse, Leon Askin (more familiar as a renta-central European in US TV of the era), Gunter Meisner and notorious Berlin playboy Rolf Eden. However, it is at this point the films start to merge.

Scotland Yard vs Dr. Mabuse (1963) goes full Edgar Wallace (down to a script by his son Bryan Edgar Wallace), and from here, the stories will at least be partly set in London (especially in the film not on this box set – Die lebenden Leichen des Dr. Mabuse, but more on that later), It also cannily recreates the Great Train Robbery mere days after Biggs, Edwards and co staged the notorious heist, and features Klaus Kinski, a Wallace staple as a Scotland Yard man, while Van Eyck is now a Scotland Yard agent with his dotty old mam as a sidekick. Preiss is out of the picture, replaced by stock footage and possesses Walter Rilla (one of several faces to be in both the Mabuse and the rival Fu Manchu series of the same era). It’s diverting but rather ordinary at times.

The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse (1964) is interesting in that it is the most Bondian, ironic as the Bond series had clearly taken influence from Mabuse down to the likes of Karin Dor and Gert Frobe appearing. It is basically a proto-Thunderball.

Peter Van Eyck is back, here as British spy Major Anders (the character is changed from Bill Turn, to avoid paying Bryan Edgar Wallace), while Walter Rilla is initially back as Mabuse (in the body of Professor Pohland). Wolfgang Preiss gets credit, but no actual appearance. Anders is paired with a ditzy agent (Rika Dialina) to find a death ray in Malta, built by O.E. Hasse’s mad scientist. We also have Leo Genn, Yoko Tani (fresh from working in a SF film on the other side of Berlin, in DEFA’s The Silent Star), Robert Beatty as Anders’ M-like boss, Franco-Yorkshire Hammer veteran Yvonne Furneaux, Italian Claudio Gora, Spaniard Gustavo Rojo and Russo-American-Italian Feodor Chaliapin Jr, long before his late period career revitalisation appearing in the likes of Argento’s Inferno, The Name of the Rose and Moonstruck.

Like Lang, the director is a former Hollywood ex-pat – Hugo Fregonese, an Argentine director who had worked in Hollywood in the 50s. One can note a Lang-esque quality in such films as the atmospheric Jack Palance the Ripper/the Lodger remake Man in the Attic (1953), the Gary Cooper western Blowing Wild (1953) and Val Lewton’s Apache Drums (1951) We see an Edgar Wallace-esque England full of stock footage of buses advertising Crawford’s Cream Crackers and pictures of the Queen. Though it’s watchable compared to the myriad Eurospy films of the era, it’s somewhat bland.

This was not quite the last of Dr. Mabuse. Cannily, German distributor UFA realised that Scream and Scream Again had a very Mabuse-like plot, so in the German dub changed Vincent Price’s character to Mabuse, and thus the film became Die lebenden Leichen des Dr. Mabuse (1970). A few years later, having already finished the rival Harry Alan Towers/Christopher Lee Fu Manchu franchise, Jess Franco was allowed by CCC to do the same to Mabus with La Venganza del Doctor Mabuse (1972), unconvincingly set in America but shot in Alicante.

Several years later, the arthouse German sci-fi Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984) featured Delphine Seyrig playing Mabuse as a gender-bender to beware. Claude Chabrol’s homage Dr M (1990) featured Sir Alan Bates as a pseudo-Mabuse. And Dark Shadows actor Jerry Lacy played the role in a series of cheapo pseudo-fan films in the 2010s.

As for the special features, the extras are excellent. A series of fun and informative commentaries by Lang expert David Kalat inform on almost every detail of the film, (Who knew that British producer Richard Gordon was supposed to produce an alternate cut of Thousand Eyes with Richard Todd replacing Peter Van Eyck?) and there’s a lovely video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson that entertainingly and informatively elucidates on the franchise and expands on it further.

Mabuse Lives! Dr. Mabuse at CCC: 1960-1964 is out now on Blu-ray, released by Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label.

– Limited Collector’s Edition Box Set [2000 copies]
– Limited edition hardcase featuring new artwork by Tony Stella
– A limited edition 60-page collector’s book featuring new notes on each film by journalist Holger Haase, a new essay by German film scholar Tim Bergfelder, an archival essay by David Cairns, archival writing by Fritz Lang and notes by Lotte Eisner on Lang’s final unreleased projects
– 1080p HD presentations of all six films from 2K restorations of the original film elements undertaken by CCC
– Original German audio tracks (Uncompressed LPCM audio)
– Optional English dub tracks on all six films
– Optional English subtitles
– Region A/B
– Archival audio commentary on The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse by film historian and author David Kalat
– New audio commentaries on the other five films by film historian and author David Kalat
– Mabuse Lives at CCC – New interview with producer and managing director of CCC Film Alice Brauner, daughter of CCC founder Artur Brauner
– New introductions to each film by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas
– Kriminology – new video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson
– I raggi mortali del Dr Mabuse – alternate Italian cut of The Death Ray of Dr Mabuse
– 2002 interview with actor Wolfgang Preiss
– Alternate ending for The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse