THE DEATH RAY OF DR. MABUSE (1964)

This the sixth and last of the German Mabuse movies from the 1960s, and as with the rest, a vague attempt is made at connecting this film with the previous one, SCOTLAND YARD HUNTS DR. MABUSE, so this begins like the last one ended, with Prof. Pohland in an asylum muttering about the mysterious (and supposedly dead) Dr. Mabuse having possessed him. He also mentions a death ray, assumed by the police to be a part of Mabuse's infamous "testament," a number of nefarious plans to be carried out by whomever Mabuse is currently controlling. Pohland escapes and, because a Prof. Larsen is known to be experimenting with his own death ray in his laboratory on Malta, the cops (or the secret service or the spies, whatever they are), led by Major Anders, are sent to investigate and to protect, if necessary, Larsen from Pohland. Calling his project Operation Archimedes, the ray is a large mirror device that can concentrate light rays into one strong destructive ray, as Archimedes may have done during the Siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C.E. Larsen has the ray locked up securely and only he knows the code. The film quickly takes on the feel of a James Bond movie with Anders set up as a ladies man who in fact gets to flirt with at least three different Bond girls, er…, Andrers girls: Judy, one of his regular mistresses whom he talks into becoming a spy (and who winds up ensconced in a local brothel for protection); Gilda, the daughter of Prof. Larsen; and Mercedes, the exotic Eurasian secretary of the local museum keeper Botani. There are red herrings everywhere, and practically every character, even Larsen, is at some point suspected of being in league with Mabuse. There are two brothers, Mario and Jason Monta, and I was never quite sure what they had to do with the story, though the mustachioed Mario (played by Gustavo Rojo) is nice eye candy. The death ray itself is never used, but the climactic James Bondian battle plays out mostly underwater between two small armies of frogmen.

I took a lot of plot summary notes while watching, as the movie is cluttered with incident, but ultimately with all the characters, some rather illogical plot points, and few actual clues to follow, it's best just to surrender to the nonsense. Peter van Eyck (pictured above left) reappears from the last film as the hero; technically he has a different name but it doesn't matter. As in SCOTLAND YARD, he's a bit too old (he was 53 and looked every year of it) and too low energy for the role but he acquits himself nicely in a wild fisticuffs scene in a belltower. I like the running gag that, despite trying to keep his mission a secret, everyone on the island knows who he is and what he's doing. All three women are good with Rika Dialyna the standout as the perky Judy (we are led to believe that she did not have to actually do sex work at the brothel, but the possibility that she may have is in the air). Yvonne Furneaux (Gilda) and Yoko Tani (Mercedes) are also fine. Robert Beatty is Anders' boss and Leo Genn is Beatty's boss—he gets a nice scene near the end. The movie ends with the unmasked villain mindlessly repeating, "It wasn’t me, it was Mabuse," but another film was not made. The 90-minute German print is the standard version, but the disc includes an Italian dub that is twenty minutes longer. It does clarify a couple of plot points, but I also felt it dragged a bit. Overall it's fun but it has little in common with the earlier Mabuse films in terms of style or tone. Aka The Secret of Dr. Mabuse. Pictured at right are van Eyck and Gustavo Rojo. [Blu-ray]