GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #15

DR. MABUSE

This fictional character was created by Norbert Jacques in the 1921 novel "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler".  Jacques (1880-1954) was a novelist from Luxembourg who became a German citizen in 1922.  He created the character in the fashion of Fantomas and Dr. Fu Manchu but with the goal of commercial success and political commentary.  Mabuse was a master of disguise and telepathic hypnosis, employing body transference like demonic possession, and sometimes utilized technologies like television and phonograph machines.  He built a "society of crime".  He would rarely commit crimes himself, instead operating through a network of agents who would enact his schemes.  Mabuse's agents range from career criminals to innocent citizens who are blackmailed or hypnotized into cooperation, or dupes who are manipulated so successfully that they do not realize they are doing Mabuse's bidding.  His identity often changes.  One Dr. Mabuse may be defeated and sent to an asylum or jail or the grave only for a new Dr. Mabuse to later appear.  The replacement invariably has the same methods, powers of hypnosis, and criminal genius.  It's even suggested that the "real" Mabuse is some sort of spirit that possesses a series of hosts.  His main nemesis is Chief Inspector Lohmann of the police.

The 1921 novel benefitted from unprecedented publicity to become a bestseller in Germany with half-a-million copies sold.  Fritz Lang, already an accomplished film director, worked with his wife Thea von Harbou to bring the novel to the screen.  The result, "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" (1922) was over four hours long and was released in two parts a few months apart - Part One "The Great Gambler" and Part Two "Inferno".  Despite the success of the novel and film it was almost a decade before anything more was done.  Norbert wrote "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" in the early 1930s but it wasn't published until 1950.  "Mabuse's Colony" was an unfinished novel in 1930 in which Mabuse has died and a group of devotees are starting an island colony based upon the principles of Mabuse's manifesto.  The unfinished book wasn't published until 1994.  After conversations with Lang and von Harbou, Jacques agreed to discontinue the sequel and Lang made the 1933 film "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse".  In it the Mabuse of the earlier film is an inmate of an insane asylum where he meticulously and obsessively writes down his manifesto for crime and terrorism.  His plans are carried out by criminals outside the asylum.

Fritz Lang deliberately intended the film to suggest the Mabuse-like qualities of Adolf Hitler who was then rising to become Chancellor of Germany while the film was being made, thus making it a cautionary tale of sorts.  When Hitler came to power Joseph Goebbels became his Minister of Propaganda and Goebbels banned the film in Germany, suggesting that the film would undermine confidence in the country's leadership.  Goebbels said the film was a menace to public health and safety.  He expressed his admiration for Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis" and expressed his desire for Lang to create films like that for the Nazis.  That very night, after meeting with Goebbels, Lang abandoned his home, wife, and possessions and fled Germany.  Along with other directors like Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, William Dieterle, and Robert Siodmak, Lang and them left Germany to come to America, bringing their brand of German Expressionism to the American screen.  Influenced by the new hardboiled literature of the times Lang and his peers created a style of movies that the French would identify as film noir in the post-WWII years.

FILMS 

"Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" UCO (Germany) 1922.  Released in two parts called "The Great Gambler" and "Inferno".  Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Mabuse), Aud Egede Nissen, Alfred Abel, Bernhard Goetzke, Paul Richter.  Director: Fritz Lang.  Mabuse, a master criminal, often in disguise and portraying several personages in turn, constantly spins webs to entrap weak, unwary victims in the clubs, cabarets, seance chambers, and dark alleys of a Germany increasingly given to decadence.  A plodding public prosecutor (Goetzke) finally ferrets out and raids Mabuse's secret headquarters, even though Mabuse had used hypnosis in an attempt to make the prosecutor destroy himself.  With his gang of thieves, counterfeiters, and murderers caught, Mabuse collapses, his mind gone.

"The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" Nero (Germany) 1933.  Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke (Inspector Lohmann), Oscar Beregi, Gustav Diessl, Vera Liessem.  Director: Lang.  The character of Lohmann had earlier appeared in Lang's 1931 film "M" and was now incorporated into the Mabuse franchise.  Mabuse is in an asylum run by the respected Dr. Baum (Beregi) where Mabuse scribbles volumes of mad plans for dominating society by spreading terrorism.  Ultimately Mabuse dies but not before he hypnotizes Baum into taking over his plots and identity.  Concealed behind a screen, Baum directs his new criminal gangs.  Finally caught by a bulldog policeman, Baum also goes insane.  

After nearly three decades of self-exile from Germany, Fritz Lang was invited by officials in the German film industry to return to Germany and direct once more.  Lang took them up on their offer and his second project upon his return was a Mabuse film.

"The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse" CCC (Germany) 1960.  Peter van Eyck, Dawn Addams, Wolfgang Preiss (Mabuse), Gert Frobe, Werner Peters.  Director: Lang.  A television reporter is killed at a traffic intersection while waiting in his car for the light to change, an event predicted by a blind clairevoyant (Preiss) who says "I see dark clouds - murder".  At the lush Hotel Luxor, secretly invested with electronic eyes and ears, a young American millionaire rescues a distraught girl from a high ledge and falls in love with her.  She is actually the minion of an unknown mastermind, a criminal who exploits the dead Mabuse's plans and is his spiritual heir, and who wishes to extend - through her marriage - his influence into the United States.  This was Lang's last film but other directors continued the series.  Through all the sequels the Mabuse papers inspire new super-criminals and madmen, all fervent followers of the long dead evil genius.

"The Return of Dr. Mabuse" CCC, 1961.  Frobe (Inspector Lohmann), Lex Barker, Daliah Lavi, Preiss.  Director: Harald Reinl.  The unknown Mabuse figure takes over a prison to use convicts in his scheme for world domination.

"The Invisible Dr. Mabuse" CCC, 1962.  Frobe, Senta Berger, Helmut Schmid.  Director: Reinl.  The Mabuse figure, in seeking a formula for invisibility, terrorizes a young ballerina who nightly performs a curious dance that ends with her being guillotined.

"The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" CCC, 1962.  Frobe, Berger, Schmid, Preiss, Walter Rilla.  Director: Werner Klinger.  Remake of the 1933 film.  The madhouse scribblings of Mabuse (Preiss) intrigues a new asylum chief, Professor Pohland (Rilla).

"Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse" CCC, 1963.  Peter Van Eyck, Sabine Bethmann, Werner Peters, Klaus Kinski, Rilla.  Director: Paul May.  Based on a novel by Bryan Edgar Wallace.  Professor Pohland, inspired by Mabuse, goes to England to acquire an electronic device that can enslave minds.  He sends out telepathic orders to thirteen political leaders - and the mother of a young Scotland Yard man.

"The Secret of Dr. Mabuse" CCC, 1964.  Van Eyck, Leo Genn, O. E. Hasse, Yvonne Furneaux, Yoko Tani, Preiss, Rilla, Robert Beatty.  Director: Hugo Fregonese.  At the coast of Malta Pohland seeks a death ray mirror that can destroy any city on Earth.  The underwater scuba sequences with frogmen en masse, are remarkably similar to those in the James Bond movie "Thunderball" of two years later.  At the finale a dying Pohland mutters, "It was not me, it was Mabuse - he used my body".

"The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse" 1972.  Jack Taylor (Mabuse), Fred Williams, Ewa Stromberg.  Director: Jess Franco.  Dr. Mabuse and his associates steal all kinds of attributes from a National Research Institute in order to complete his own evil mind-control ray.

"Dr. M" NEF, 1990.  Alan Bates (Dr. Marsfeldt), Jennifer Beals, Andrew McCarthy, Wolfgang Preiss.  Director: Claude Chabrol.  Based on "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler".  In the near future there is an outbreak of dramatic suicides in Berlin.  A police detective suspects that the suicides are really caused by a lone madman, Dr. Marsfeldt, who is using a form of mass hypnosis.  His investigations lead him to a beautiful, enigmatic woman (Beals) whose image is being used to manipulate the populace.  Released in the US as "Club Extinction".

"Doctor Mabuse" Hollinsworth, 2013.  Jerry Lacy (Mabuse), Nathan Wilson (Inspector Lohemann), Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker, Linden Chiles.  Director: Ansel Faraj.  Criminal mastermind Mabuse returns from exile to begin a new reign of terror and only Lohemann stands in his way.  Some may remember Lacy as the Bogart character in Woody Allen's "Play it Again, Sam".

"Doctor Mabuse: Etiopomar" Hollinsworth, 2014.  Lacy, Wilson, Scott, Parker.  Director: Faraj.  Six interwoven tales document the downfall of Mabuse and his city Etiopomar.

"Thousand and One Lives of Doctor Mabuse" Hollinsworth, 2020.  Lacy, Wilson, Chiles.  Director: Faraj.  Lohemann has heroically killed Mabuse, believing that he has put an end to the criminal mastermind's reign.  But the nightmare has only just begun.