The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse [VHS]


Fritz Lang's all-but-unseen final film, a low-budget German thriller that resurrects (sort of) his legendary underworld genius Dr. Mabuse, is a flashback to Lang's early days of criminal conspiracies and wild, fast-paced adventures. A relentless police inspector (Gert Goldfinger Fröbe) targets the Nazi-built Hotel Luxor as the central connection in over a dozen murders and camps out in the lobby. Upstairs an American industrialist (played by the very German Peter Van Eyck) rescues a suicidal woman (Dawn Addams) from the ledge and falls in love, while in the basement a mysterious, club-footed character watches everything on an elaborate closed-circuit surveillance system. Rounding out the cast of shady characters are a jovial but nosy insurance salesman, a creepy blind psychic, and a particularly menacing Howard Vernon as an icy assassin with a silent rifle. The complicated, at times confusing plot is secondary to the web of blackmail, murder, secret identities, and incessant surveillance at the center of the conspiracy: everyone is spying on somebody and almost no one is as he or she seems. The generic sets and frankly cheep special effects are made up for with ingenious cinematic signatures (the opening assassination is a model of cool simplicity and striking suggestion), dark humor, a rich cast of vivid characters, and a driving pace that sends the film hurtling headlong toward a fatal climax. --Sean Axmaker