THE INVISIBLE DR MABUSE (1962)

The Metropol Theater, which seems to specialize in Grand Guignol operettas, is presenting a show called "The Dancer, the Executioner and the Clown" which climaxes each night as the dancer is executed by guillotine. After her head drops in a basket, the curtains close and the dancer, Liane, comes out to take a bow. Watching her every night from a box is an invisible admirer; all we see is a pair of binoculars hanging in the air, pointed at the stage. One night, FBI agent Nick Prado, who is scoping out the theater as a possible hotbed of bad guys involved with the super-secret Enterprise X, sees the binoculars and chases after the invisible figure. Prado winds up backstage where he is trapped by some set flats, sent down a trap door, and tortured by what appear to be stagehands, led by a clown. They accidentally kill Prado, much to the anger of their leader who is only seen in shadow. Nick's body is packed into a theatrical trunk and sent to the docks to be shipped out, but the dock workers are on strike, so dogs sniff out the corpse and his death makes the headlines, which irritates the Shadowy Guy even more. Fellow FBI agent Joe Como comes to Berlin to investigate. Enterprise X is the work of a Dr. Erasmus; it can make people invisible, and in fact, the invisible fan of Liane's is Erasmus as his face is horribly deformed from a car accident, not Shadow Guy, But Shadow Guy wants to get his hands on the invisibility device to create an invisible army which he will use to commit a major crime on December 8th. Como and Inspector Brahm think it sounds like a plot by the evil and insane Dr. Mabuse, but isn't he dead? At the end of the previous Mabuse movie, Mabuse appears to die in a fire, but his body was not found, which left the possibility of a sequel open. This is that sequel which brings back Lex Barker as American FBI agent Joe Como and Wolfgang Priess as Mabuse. Otherwise, however, this works as a standalone pulp fiction story of a mysterious crime lord who orders his henchmen around in a plot for eventual world domination. Someone tries to kill Como (doesn't work) and Liane (also doesn't work), and the invisible army does indeed come into being, but in the end, Mabuse is stymied in a spectacularly fiery climax (Priess only appears as Mabuse in the final scene) and carted off to an asylum as hopelessly insane, leaving the door open for yet another Mabuse tale. Barker is OK, as is Karin Dor as Liane. I missed Gert Frobe as the inspector, but otherwise this is a well paced and well shot action thriller, even if the Mabuse connection has weakened a bit by now. Pictured are Dor and Barker. [Blu-ray]