THE TERROR OF DOCTOR MABUSE (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

The fourth in the series of 1960s "Doctor Mabuse" films is a partial remake of Lang's 1933 TESTAMENT OF DOCTOR MABUSE, which itself was a sequel to the well lauded silent films that introduced the character.

I confess that I never saw the 1933 film more than once, and that even the review I did in 2014 was written sometime after the first viewing, mostly from memory. But I stand by my position that TESTAMENT was "a rather crabbed, one-note affair." Lang's scenario was that after Mabuse's defeat in the 1920s, he spent the next eleven years in a mental sanitarium. However, police officers become aware of a series of crimes so well planned that they recall the genius of Mabuse. The big reveal is that although Mabuse has not been able to escape his confinement, he has used his great hypnotic powers to dominate head doctor Baum. Mabuse then uses Baum as a pawn to direct his crooks to execute his crimes. While the basic idea was intriguing, and may have been a shot at the Nazi hierarchy Lang fled shortly afterward. I felt the director was a little too impressed with his own conceit and didn't develop the concept properly, to say nothing of the fact that it was a rather dull sequel.

TERROR was the only Mabuse film directed by Werner Klinger, but producer Artur Brauner probably made certain to keep this installment's level of combative action much higher than the 1933 original. TERROR does start with Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss again) imprisoned in a sanitarium, but he's only been there a few years since his incarceration at the end of INVISIBLE DOCTOR MABUSE. It's no big disclosure to state that once again the head of the sanitarium, Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla), believes that he's in control of the situation, when in fact he's become the pawn through which Mabuse engineers his criminal schemes. The organization this time is a ruthless one, and uses more uncanny gadgets to punish rebels. A member who seeks to turn informer (played by Leon Askin of "Hogan's Heroes" fame) is killed by a backward-firing pistol, and a crook who defies Pohland/Mabuse is electrocuted. (The English dub claims that the mastermind uses an "electric ray," but there's no clear depiction of such a device on screen.) 

In contrast to INVISIBLE, this entry is much improved by the return of Gert Frobe as Mabuse's determined opponent Inspector Lohmann. A touch of humor is also provided by Lohmann's young assistant, who insists of plaguing the inspector with deductions he makes based on whatever detective stories he's read. A palatable subplot, not present in the 1933 film, involves a cash-strapped young boxer who's lured into the Mabuse gang. The boxer's wife is played by a young Senta Berger, a few years before she became a familiar face in such American productions as the 1967 AMBUSHERS.