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 They acknowledge that Fritz Lang was the creator of Dr. Mabuse and that this
particular film was one of four sound movies that featured the "wild
supercriminal." Gert Frobe is noted for his role as Goldfinger in the movie of
the same name and Lex Barker is listed as having been a "former Tarzan."
Director Harold Reinl is listed as having had something to do with something
called Blood Fiend (Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism). 1961, 89 minutes, VHS
Back in 1986, the director's wife stabbed him to death. I can only assume that
she just finally got around to watching this thirty-eighth entry in the
esteemed Dr. Mabuse series. If you are like me and actually go outside every
now and again, Dr. Mabuse may be up there with that other really famous German
film character Perry Rhoden that no one without sauerkraut on his breath has
ever heard of. Apparently Fritz Lang, whom everyone has heard of made some
famous silent movies featuring this Dr. Mabuse guy. Mabuse was some type of
psychiatrist/super-villain that reared his ambitious mug every so often to try
and take over the world or at least the beer tent at the local Ocktoberfest.
Later, in the 1960s some more movies were made with Dr. Mabuse and the Return of Dr. Mabuse is one of those. It's all about how Mabuse may or may not be back from the
dead and that he may or may not be trying take over the world from his secret
base located in a German prison. The movie stars a couple of guys you've
probably at least heard of, but also probably never thought could carry their
own movie (and they can't). Gert Frobe plays Inspector Lohmann, the cop who
believes that Mabuse has returned from the dead. Frobe is familiar to all of
us as the lardly super-villain Goldfinger in the hit James Bond movie, called Goldfinger. Frobe probably used this role to get a vibe on how to play a degenerate bad
guy who's gimmick involved ludicrous plots to take over the world or steal a
bunch of gold or something. Lex Barker plays FBI agent Joe Como. Lex is
remembered as one of the fifty or so crappy film Tarzans that swung into
theatres after Johnny Weissmuller hung up his loin cloth. A good portion of the
movie is spent playing around with whether Lex is a good guy or a bad guy. The
only person this really serves to confuse is Inspector Lohmann who obviously
went to the Inspector Clouseau Police Academy and actually says something like
" I suspect everyone!" at one point while accusing his police comrades of maybe
being Dr. Mabuse.  Things get going on a train where a guy is riding around with a briefcase
handcuffed to his hand. This was a popular secret agent thing in the sixties,
but really, could you be more obvious? I mean, if you were taking the train or
the bus, wouldn't you blend in more if you just carried your briefcase with
you? If someone is looking for the super-duper secret info you're carrying,
the fact that you have a briefcase handcuffed to you is probably a tip-off that
even someone like Inspector Lohmann could digest. And here's the other thing
(and it's actually borne out in this film as well as the recent British film Snatch) - if what is in the briefcase is so important that it is handcuffed to you,
do you really think that that fact is going to stop whatever supercriminal is
after the stuff from getting it? Flesh and bone aren't really much of a
barrier to someone who's trying to rule the world. "Oh, I see you have the
briefcase handcuffed to your wrist. Dang! I really need it, but I don't see
how I can get it, what with it being handcuffed to your wrist and all!" So
this guy on the train gets rubbed out and the briefcase is stolen. The body is
found and Inspector Lohmann is called in just as he is about to go off and go
fishing for trout or something. As for what's in the briefcase, they blather
about it containing "incriminating information about the Syndicate." Yes, this
is one of those early sixties movies that throws the word "Syndicate" around
the way "Cartel" was thrown around in the nineties as shorthand for some
amorphous, really bad group of criminals. This guy that was killed had a
female partner that is also on the loose in Berlin or whatever ugly German city
this takes place in. She doesn't last long though as a truck rolls up on her
and sets her on fire with a flamethrower that's sticking out of the side of the
truck (must be a Volvo). Lohmann is called to that scene and checks it out.
He's accosted by a female reporter and Lohmann tells her she belongs in the
kitchen cooking strudel and brats. Then she asks what happened and he says
there's been a murder. Then Lohmann marvels at how this little chippie tricked
him into revealing that there had been a murder. I was marveling at how some
German mother could have named this dim butterball, Gert.  Lex Barker enters the picture putting the moves on the reporter, Maria. Lex is
vague about who he is, but he yanks Maria out of the way from a speeding truck
so she gets kind of sweet on this guy. They follow Lohmann around and Lex
thinks that Lohmann believes the culprit behind the recent spat of colorful
murders in none other than Dr. Mabuse. Following some clues he's managed to
pick up along the way, Lohmann goes to this church to talk to the author of a
book he found in the possession of one of the murder victims. It's a book
about the criminal mind featuring chapters with titles like "The Werewolf Myth"
and "The Dr. Mabuse Myth." Instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion that
these murders were being carried out by a werewolf equipped with a flame
thrower, Lohmann believes that Dr. Mabuse may be out and about again. At the
church he runs into Maria and Lex who is identified as an FBI agent name Joe
Como. There's a bunch of blah blah blah and someone throws a bomb at Lohmann
and somehow he lumbers out of the way of it and survives and Joe Como tries to
talk to this mysterious voice that is coming from somewhere in the church. At
this point it is revealed that Joe Como is really a mobster named Nick
Somethingorother and that he is there representing the Syndicate and wants to
cut some kind of franchise agreement with Mabuse. Meanwhile, Lohmann decides
to go to a prison to see one of the inmates who may have some info on Mabuse.
Strange things are going on at the prison what with the prisoners all working
in this secret lab mixing chemicals and doing stuff with Bunsen burners (always
a good idea). The warden is obviously not on the up and up, with his really
ugly eyeglasses and goatee that just scream "disguise!" But Lohmann leaves
and I don't recall if he got any info or not but later there is a scene where
Lohmann and Como (or is it Nick?) are almost run over by a truck driven by the
prisoner that Lohmann has just seen. So it's back to the prison so Lohmann can
ask the warden why he's furloughing prisoners to run his fat ass over. Nothing
much happens there and later the prisoner jumps out a window to his death.
This was as a result of some transmitted instructions that Mabuse gave the guy
through an ear piece. It's nice that once they had this guy in custody after
trying mow down Lohmann that nobody bothered to search him. Oh yeah, the
warden also gets into a car outside of Lohmann's office and blows up. And in
case you were wondering, Joe Como is really Joe Como, FBI agent, not Nick
Somethingorother, Syndicate Goon. The FBI doctored his prints to make Joe look
like he was Nick even though he was telling people he was Joe (or was that
Nick?) And let me throw in one more thing for you to ruminate on. Maria's
father is a prisoner at the prison. He's also a brilliant scientist. By the time they pulled out the "going under cover in prison" angle to finish
off the last third of the movie, all the plot twists and turns had given me a
headache. See, Mabuse is having this drug manufactured at the prison that
allows him to control the minds of the people who take it. For some reason he
is going to demonstrate it's value to the Syndicate by having an army of mind
controlled prisoners storm the city and blow up a nuclear power plant or
something. If he has this drug and it works and he wants to rule the world, I
don't know why he's wasting his time trying to sell it to someone else or why
he is using it to only control prisoners, but it's his mad scheme to rule the
world not mine. Lohmann has figured out some of this or none of it or all of
it and decides that someone should go undercover in prison to ferret out Mabuse
and his plans. Naturally he selects the very hunky Joe Como, who enters
prison, not as Joe or Nick but as a third guy that I don't even remember.
There he talks to Maria's father who is being forced to make the drug (or
they'll do something to his daughter!) and he's also torqued off because he's
in prison even though he's innocent (yeah, you and every other con in there!).
He tells Joe how to avoid the drugs effects and then some bad guys come in
there and make him take the drug. He pretends to be under it's influence
though with Lex's limited acting range, you can't really tell except he walks
like he's got something up his butt (this is prison after all!). He finds out
the plan is to sabotage the power plant, but that they are going out ahead of
time as construction crews to dig up some wires or pipes to make it easier to
damage the plant later. This idiotic aspect of the plan allows Lex to write a
note to the fuzz that says something like "Us and Mabuse are sabotaging plant
tomorrow. Hope to see you there! Love, Lex." He leaves the note at the
construction site, the cops find it and Lohmann and every available man hide
behind giant piles of dirt in front of the power plant and wait for the
zombie-prisoners to show up so that they can shoot them all. On the other
side of Hazzard county, Maria has gotten herself kidnapped and Lex has gotten
himself discovered. He ends up finding her all tied up in some room that is
being flooded. After getting themselves locked in, Lex decides to do the
stupidest thing I ever saw someone do to escape a deathtrap. He breaks off a
pipe and lets gas flood the room, then he goes under water, but sticks his hand
up toward the pipe with gas coming out of it and proceeds to light a lighter
causing an explosion which blows the doors off and sets them free but
inexplicably does not blow any part of Lex's arm off. That's good old American
know how for you. Eventually it is revealed that the warden didn't really blow up and that he was
wearing one of those Mission Impossible masks that involves different actors
playing the same character instead of the same actor wearing different masks
and that the warden was Dr. Mabuse. Lohmann and Mabuse rumble on the railroad
tracks and Mabuse knocks Lohmann out. Rather than finish him off, Mabuse
decides to pull the old Snidely Whiplash routine and tries to back the train
over Lohmann. Joe pulls Lohmann out of the way and the train rolls into a
tunnel. Mabuse is unable to put the brakes on and runs into another train
resulting in an explosion that supposedly kills Mabuse. You and I and Lohmann
are less than convinced, but all of us are anxious to put this particular
installment behind us so the movie ends. The movie is a confusing patchwork of
spy cliches and mad scientist gimmicks, from the mind control stuff to the
masks to the eighteen identities of Lex Barker (not an interesting one in the
bunch!). This doesn't even begin to address the "undercover in prison" part
of the movie that is so awful that Vam Damme devoted an entire film to it in Death Warrant. The movie is a cheap and ugly-looking thing with low-rent locations and
actors that look as if they were yanked out of the German Ed Wood fan club.
Tor Johnson would have been right at home as one of the brainless prisoners.
I'm still not sure who believed that Gert Frobe could be a leading man, but
just because you look like Khrushchev doesn't mean you can carry a picture (at
least as the hero). The Mabuse character is meant to be mysterious, I suppose,
but he comes off as being woefully undeveloped. Having a title villain that
you rarely see and only hear from a la Charlie from Charlie's Angels only makes
the film feel muddled and lacking in tension. There's only the one brief
showdown between Lohmann and Mabuse and it ends with Mabuse backing into a
train. Not exactly the stuff of legend. Lohmann needed a better pay off than
that since he was portrayed as the only the one who believed it was Mabuse all
along. Getting yanked to safety by Lex Barker doesn't really add much of an
edge to the whole "obsessed cop" thing he tries to get going in fits and
starts. If they are positioning this as a cop matching wits with his arch
nemesis they need to have a cop and villain with stronger characters than these
two. If they are positioning this as a fairly ridiculous and completely
forgettable sequel to a movie whose character's popularity peaked about eighty
years ago in Bavaria, then I guess you couldn't do any worse, though I do see a
movie called The Invisible Dr. Mabuse sitting in a stack next to all my Perry Rhoden sci-fi novels.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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