The Return of Doctor Mabuse
The Return of Doctor Mabuse | |
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Directed by | Harald Reinl |
Screenplay by | |
Produced by | Artur Brauner[1] |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Karl Löb[1] |
Edited by | Hermann Haller[1] |
Music by | Peter Sandloff[1] |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Variety Distribution |
Release dates |
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Running time | 89 minutes[1] |
Countries |
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The Return of Doctor Mabuse (
It was shot at the Spandau Studios and on location around Berlin. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Otto Erdmann and Hans Jürgen Kiebach.
The German title Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse was a reference to the popular German police procedural television show of the time, Stahlnetz. In 1966 the 1960s Dr. Mabuse films were released in the United States to tie in with Gert Fröbe's fame in the role of Auric Goldfinger with this film being renamed The Phantom Fiend.
Plot
Inspector Lohmann's eagerly awaited fishing holiday is put on hold when he is called to investigate the murder of a man found in a railway tunnel. He was an Interpol courier carrying proof of the Chicago Syndicate's planned cooperation with a European criminal organisation that was in an attache case chained to, but now missing from his body. The Inspector gets word from Washington D.C. that a female representative of the Syndicate, Mrs. Pizarro is currently in Europe to meet up with the European criminals, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is sending Special Agent Joe Como to liaise with the German authorities. Lohmann visits a prison to have a meeting with one of the prisoners, Alberto Sandro, who was a member of the European criminal organisation in an unsuccessful bid to learn more about the upcoming events.
Mrs. Pizarro is murdered by a
Following his only lead, Lohmann goes to obtain further information from the blind witness who is run over and killed. Como and Lohmann pursue the murderer that turns out to be Alberto Sandro who has apparently escaped from the prison. Recapturing him, the prison authorities, who maintain an industrial laundry allowing trusted prisoners to deliver and pick up cleaning in the community, deny Sandro has left the prison. The warden insists Sandro is sedated in his cell. They discover that the person in Sandro's cell is a dead man with a wooden leg who the blind man had identified.
Dr. Mabuse's drug, invented by Maria's scientist father who is a prisoner in the same prison as Sandro, is a mind control device capable of turning a person into a zombie whose actions can be controlled by radio transmissions. Mabuse not only has an army of criminals who can come and go from the prison but can be commanded to do criminal acts that they will have no recollection of later on. In the meantime Lohmann's assistant gets the fingerprints of Como and transmits them to FBI headquarters who declare that the fingerprints of the man calling himself Como is not the real Agent Como. Como/Scappio is sent to the prison. He discovers Dr. Mabuse's display of the power of his drug to the Chicago Syndicate will come on Friday the 13th (the date of the film's premiere); when every prisoner will be injected with the mind control drug, armed with weapons and released in order to launch an armed assault to destroy a nearby nuclear power plant.
Cast
- Gert Fröbe as Inspector Lohmann
- Lex Barker as Joe Como/Nick Scappio
- Daliah Lavi as Maria Sabrehm
- Fausto Tozzi as Warden Wolf
- Werner Peters as Böhmler
- Wolfgang Preiss as Dr. Mabuse
- Rudolf Forster as Professor Julius Sabrehm
- Rudolf Fernau as Pastor Briefenstein
- Joachim Mock as Detective Voss
- Laura Solari as Mrs. Pizarro
- Ady Berber as Alberto Sandro
- Henry Coubet as Blinder
- Jean-Roger Caussimon as Küster
- Albert Bessler as Trödler
- Lou Seitz as Mrs. Lohmann
Release
The Return of Dr. Mabuse was distributed in West Germany by Constantin Film 13 October 1961.[1] In 1962, it was released in Italy as F.B.I. contro Dr. Mabuse on 3 May and France on 10 June as Le retour du Docteur Mabuse.[1]
Reception
From contemporary reviews, an anonymous reviewer in the
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse" (in German). Filmportal.de. Retrieved 25 October 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-2337-8.
- Monthly Film Bulletin. Vol. 37, no. 435. British Film Institute. April 1970. pp. 80–81.