The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
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The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1960 film made in West Germany. It is the last film of Fritz Lang and concerned the further exploits of Dr. Mabuse, a character Lang had used in two previous films in 1922 and 1933. The movie is based on a story by Jan Fethke and brought the story into the modern day ( 1960's).
A reporter is killed in his car on his way to work. Inspector Kras gets a call from his informant Cornelius, a blind fortune teller, who had a vision of the crime but not the perpetrator. Meanwhile, Henry Travers, a rich industrialist, checks into the Luxor Hotel, which has been outfitted by the Nazis during World War II to spy on people in every room. He becomes involved with Marian Menil who is being threatened by her evil clubfooted husband. Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig, purportedly a salesman, who is also a guest in the hotel always seems to be lurking about.These disparate characters eventually get together to solve what appears to be the re-emergence of the long-dead Dr. Mabuse.
The film featured Peter Van Eyck, Dawn Addams,Gert Frobe, and Wolfgang Preiss. It combined elements of Edgar Wallace, spy fiction, Nazis and Big Brother surveillance with the nihilism of the Mabuse world. There were several subsequent modern Mabuse films (Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse (1961), Die Unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse(1962), Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1962)( a remake of the 1933 Lang film), Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (1963), and Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse(1964)) before the fad petered out. Jess Franco and Claude Chabrol revived the character in the 70's and 80's in two unrelated films.
