In Berlin, an Interpol agent on a train is killed by a man with a prosthetic leg. The agent was carrying important papers concerning a Chicago crime syndicate which was reaching out to a Berlin crime ring for some nefarious purpose. Inspector Lohmann, who was about to leave on a family vacation, is called in to spearhead the investigation, and Washington sends FBI agent Joe Como to help. They are joined by journalist Maria Sabrehm, and they discover a clue on the body of a dead gang member. The book. by a local priest named Briefenstein has a chapter about the myth of Dr. Mabuse, a master criminal who died insane several years ago. When our investigators visit the priest, a voice claiming to be Mabuse's comes from the church speakers warning them to lay off. Plot points and incidents come fast and furious from here on out. The apparently resurrected Mabuse is behind a plot to use a hypnotic drug to turn a wing of inmates at a nearby prison into mindless zombies who will respond only to Mabuse's orders, and those orders are to blow up some nuclear reactors on a coming Friday the 13th in order to get the world's attention. The drug was invented by Maria's father, an inmate, and we find out that Joe might actually be a Chicago mobster named Nick. There are car crashes, explosions, more murders, the threat of death by drowning, and more false identities in play before Mabuse is unmasked and dies (again) in a train collision—or does he?
This movie is a follow-up to
THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE; I hesitate to call it a sequel though some might label it such. Mabuse was present in the previous film as a different character, but as per the title he returns here, unmasked only in the last few minutes, and he's played by the same actor (Wolfgang Preiss) who played the Mabuse figure in THOUSAND EYES. How he's still alive is not explained. Gert Frobe, who played the inspector in the previous film, is the inspector here; he has a different name, Lohmann, the name of Mabuse's nemesis in the 1933 TESTAMENT, but he's basically the same character with the same personality, perhaps a little less bumbling. That makes this film a more or less direct sequel to the 1933 film, I guess. Confused yet? It’s easy to ignore all the previous Mabuse films and just go with the wild and crazy flow here. The transfer of the Mabuse series to the German krimi genre, started with THOUSAND EYES, is mostly complete here; most mystical elements from the earlier films are gone—we find out that Mabuse's commands are sent to his zombies via earpieces they all wear. Lex Barker is Joe or Nick (who also uses the name Bob to infiltrate the prison wing) and he makes a good hero, though not as flashy at fisticuffs as he might be, and Daliah Lavi is a fine female lead, never quite becoming a romantic interest, though a makeout session does occur which is interrupted by the police. Joachim Mock is Voss, the handsome assistant to Lohmann; Werner Peters is Bohmler, one of Mabuse's chief associates; Fausto Tozzi is the suspicious prison warden; the beefy Ady Berber, who was a pro wrestler (think Tor Johnson), makes an impression in the small role of a zombie who meets a spectacular end. Speaking of which, there is a fairly graphic death scene with a person getting smashed against a brick wall by a truck, a fairly graphic death by flamethrower, and Joe and Maria get stuck in a locked room which begins filling up with water. There’s also a knockout gas attack and an ending ambiguous enough to allow us to expect a sequel. Pretty fun. Pictured at top right, Wolfgang Preiss; at left, Lex Barker. [Blu-ray]
