Often overshadowed by their most famous entry, Fritz Lang's 1933 classic The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the 1960s Mabuse cycle is a fascinating entry in the popular Krimi wave of West German-based thrillers that really surged between 1959 and the early '70s. The cycle was most prominent at the box office with the run of marvelous, flamboyant Edgar Wallace titles from the studio Rialto Film that kicked off with 1959's The Fellowship of the Frog. With the rights for the majority of the Wallace novels now tied up, rival producer Walter Brauner of the studio CCC found a handy workaround by going after similar properties including books by the writer's son, Bryan Edgar Wallace, and the character of Dr. Mabuse popularized in the aforementioned Testament and Lang's earlier epic silent classic, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. Those two properties would eventually intersect over the course of the six-film CCC Mabuse cycle shot in West Germany, which Lang himself kicked it all off with what would prove to be his final film, 1960's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. The character of Mabuse, a sinister, technologically savvy criminal mastermind who easily transitioned from an early depiction of the dangers of fascism to an embodiment of Cold War fears, would also appear in Jess Franco's very different The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse from 1972 (made during his brief tenure with Brauner) and Claude Chabrol's Dr. M from 1990, but those outliers aren't considered part of this series. Outside of Germany the films have been scattered around via different video labels and sources for many decades, and they made their global Blu-ray debut in 2019 in a German set, Dr. Mabuses Meisterwerk, which wasn't English friendly but looked spectacular with new 2K restorations that blew away anything we'd seen before. In 2025, Eureka ported over those same top-notch sources for a U.S. and U.K. set, Mabuse Lives! Dr Mabuse at CCC 1960-1964, which finally decks out all of the films with bonus features and includes both their German and English-language soundtracks with optional English subtitles.

Though it functions well as a late-period Lang film in the wake of his pair of exotic adventures for Brauner (The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb) when the director was nearing total blindness, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is also a prime slice of Krimi fun with a cast of familiar faces including Gert Fröbe (The Green Archer), Wolfgang Preiss (who played Mabuse more or less throughout the series), Werner Peters (who would appear in many Krimis for both studios), and Albert Bessler (Creature with the Blue Hand). While the Krimi by this point was mostly mingling murder mysteries with gruesome horror elements, here Lang goes for a paranoid sci-fi atmosphere right from the outset as a reporter driving along a busy city street is murdered by a passing assassin (Howard Vernon) who fires a needle-thin bullet directly into the man's head. A blind medium named Cornelius (Preiss) informs Commissioner Kras (Fröbe, three years before Goldfinger) that he witnessed the murder in a vision but cannot determine the identity of the killer. Kras believes that this latest crime stems from a mysterious evil brewing at the Hotel Luxor, a magnet for peculiar events which resemble the handiwork of the late arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse. Meanwhile a visiting American tourist, Henry Travers (Peter van Eyck), rescues beautiful young Marion (Dawn Addams) when she attempts to fling herself from the hotel's rooftop. What could have terrified her enough to take her own life? Could the evil doctor be back in business...or perhaps his successor, right under the police's noses?

A fast-paced thriller with a still-relevant focus on surveillance and subterfuge, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse was a commercial (but not critical) success at home but never received the recognition it deserved in the U.S. thanks to its drive-in oriented release in a dubbed version which since became a public domain mainstay for a little while. Lang's film relies on the nightmarish implications of technology, such as the thousands of cameras (Mabuse's "eyes") scattered around the Luxor to monitor the guests, and it eventually got a respectable edition on DVD in 2000 from the short-lived label AllDay founded by film scholar and Mabuse expert David Kalat. The DVD also restores the superior German soundtrack with optional English subtitles, though the English dub is preserved as well and worth checking out since several portions (including everything with Addams) were shot in that language. The disc also includes a 33m43s featurette, "The Thousand Eyes of Fritz Lang," which includes interviews with Lang fans like Forrest J. Ackerman and Richard Gordon tracing Lang's history and his influence from pre-WWII Germany to the '60s, as well as a photo archive, a Mabuse filmography with trailers where available, and a terrific Kalat commentary timed to this PAL-sourced master (interlaced, a bit squished from 1.66:1 to 1.78:1, and coming in much shorter at 99 minutes). In 2009, Eureka issued a standalone Blu-ray of the film featuring an HD scan supplied by CCC and a new Kalat commentary, updated and timed to the correct film speed with tons of info about the updating of the Mabuse idea for the postwar era, the slippery nature of identifying the villain, and plenty more. Overall the presentation is excellent, though presumably due to damage there's a brief but obvious SD insert at the 56-minute mark; both the German and English tracks are included with optional subtitles, plus a 2002 interview with actor Wolfgang Preiss (15m50s) about his Hollywood project and his memories of this film (recorded just weeks before he passed away). There's also a brief (1m5s) alternate ending from the French version which wraps up the romantic subplot a little bit more. The 2025 Eureka version in the set ports over everything and adds an SD U.S. trailer as Eye of Evil and a 12m13s intro narrated by Tim Lucas (with extensive photos and artwork) covering more about the lineage of Mabuse to this film, the dodgy relationship between the director and producer, the original idea to remake Testament, and more.

Disc two of the set is dedicated to the next pair of films in the set, with the following year's The Return of Dr. Mabuse switching directors to the prolific and talented Harald Reinl (or more properly, Dr. Haral Reinl) who helmed some of the most important Rialto and CCC Krimis, Karl May westerns, the beloved The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, and another project in Lang's footsteps, an opulent '60s two-parter of Die Nibelungen. Fröbe returns here but as a different character (at least in name), Inspector Lohmann, an homage to the detective in Lang's M. When an Interpol agent carrying vital info about a European criminal organization is murdered in his train car by an assassin with a fake leg, Lohmann is dragged away from his much-anticipated fishing trip to sift through an escalating chain of deaths. He ends up teaming with FBI agent Joe Como (Barker, warming up for his famous Karl May westerns) and reporter Maria Sabrehm (The Whip and the Body's Lavi) to parse out a web of clues involving a mind control drug and the possible infestation of Mabuse's will among the criminal underworld, but many more surprises await him.

Though it doesn't have Lang's distinctive touch, Return (originally titled Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse, or literally In the Steel Net of Dr. Mabuse) compensates by amping up the action considerably with thrills and spills coming every few minutes to keep you entertained. Fröbe makes for an ingratiating lead as always, while Barker plays a more ambiguous character and gets to engage in some rugged moments including a fun, lively fight scene with the imposing Ady Berber (who got his most famous role as Blind Jack the same year in one of the best Wallaces, Dead Eyes of London). Flamethrower attacks, outdoor robberies, a shady church, and other elements make this a good time all around building up to an atmospheric finale that ensures another Mabuse adventure is just around the corner. And sure enough, it was. Though this one also had an American as one of its leads, the English dub was a lot worse when this was shown in America sometimes under the title The Phantom Fiend; that version floated around on a lot of PD releases over the years including a 2007 DVD triple feature from Retromedia paired up with two of the later films in the series (more below). All of those transfers were pretty awful and taken from severely cropped TV prints, which made the eventual German Blu-ray a godsend as with the successive films. The Eureka goes one better obviously by being English friendly including the far superior German track with English subtitles along with the usual dub (both DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono, like all the titles here). As with the remaining four films here, it's also from a newer restoration and looks gorgeous throughout with no flaws to report. Kalat contributes a new audio commentary here, and as expected it's a keeper with his Mabuse expertise touching on the returning and new cast members, the introduction of metaphysical elements compared to the previous stories, the Langian elements retained versus the innovations courtesy of Reinl, and a lot more. You also get a new Lucas intro (8m55s) surveying the history of our protagonist's character, Reinl's relevance to CCC and the Krimi, and the social concerns that trickled into the storyline; also here are the rare German trailer with English subtitles and the SD Phantom Fiend trailer from the AllDay disc.

Reinl returned for the second and final time in the series for the other film on disc two, The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (originally Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse, or The Invisible Claws of Dr. Mabuse), which brings back Barker and adds Reinl's most frequent lead and his real-life wife, Krimi icon Karin Dor. This time Fröbe gets swapped out for the wonderful Siegfried Lowitz, another major Krimi name who starred in Fellowship of the Frog and would be one of the three headliners in the all-star Der Hexer; here he plays Inspector Brahm, who gets involved when murder strikes at a theater hosting a spectacular ballet starring Liane Martin (Dor). The guilty parties are a shady bunch led by a creepy clown (Peters), but even worse, Liane is being stalked by an admirer who seems to be invisible. With a G-man among the victims, the FBI sends over Joe Como (Barker, bearing the same name but none of the character continuity here) to uncover a dastardly plan involving a device with major international ramifications.

Obviously the menacing invisible man idea puts this firmly at the farthest end of the Mabuse series when it comes to horror and sci-fi elements, though what's surprising is that it also comes up with a very clever explanation that strongly anticipates the one in Leigh Whannell's Invisible Man from 2020. Some of the special effects are still jolting today, including a great confrontation scene between Barker and his invisible foe with a neat bit of visual trickery involving a towel. On the acting front, Dor is fine as the usual damsel in distress even if the film doesn't quite manage to camouflage the fact that she isn't really a dancer. It's fun to see her paired up here with Barker the same year as their first of many Karl May collaborations in the first of the Winnetou-Old Shatterhand films, The Treasure of the Silver Lake, naturally directed by Reinl. Extra points here for the jazzy music score by Peter Sandloff, one of the series' best. Unfortunately all of the film's merits were tough to appreciate in the lousy English-dubbed version most widely shown as The Invisible Horror, which was also disseminated on the PD market including that Retromedia DVD.

The Eureka disc is a massive leap all around with a pristine restoration and far more image info visible than any other English-friendly option out there, plus the usual advantage of finally being able to see it subtitled along with the dub. Of course the clarity also means you can see the seams in a few effects shots (especially the binoculars at the beginning), but that's all part of the charm. Kalat's new audio commentary here is the icing on the cake as he analyzes the role of science fiction elements in the Mabuse cycle, the unique aspects of the supervillain's presentation here, the changing political winds in Europe, the depictions of criminal armies from film to film, and the history behind the director and his leading lady. The Lucas intro here (6m28s) is on the shorter side but follows up on his thoughts about Reinl, invisible horror and its relation to this film, and the salient points about Barker's return and other genre faces here. Finally you get another rare German trailer (with subtitles) plus the U.S. The Invisible Horror trailer from the AllDay release. A big extra on disc two is "Mabuse Lives at CCC" (15m54s), a new interview with producer and managing director of CCC Film Alice Brauner, daughter of Artur Brauner, who chats extensively about his greatest successes within and beyond thrillers, his numerous projects dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, her fondness for the often overlooked CCC comedies, and other highlights she got to see in her family's home theater including special birthday programming.

One of the more unusual entries in the series comes next on disc three with The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, a sort of remake-meets-sequel (or even a reboot before there was a cinematic thing) which transports the basic concept into a more hi-tech arena of '60s crime epics. Since there's no way to top a classic, this film is best approached as a continuation of the series with several familiar returning faces from the earlier '60s entries. Commissioner Lohmann (Fröbe again) is more than a little perturbed when Berlin is rocked by crimes which betray the involvement of the nefarious Dr. Mabuse (Preiss), who now resides within the walls of an insane asylum. A major gold heist from an armored truck is the most recent criminal feat, with the perpetrators even having the wit to hand over some bus fare to their victims before taking off with the loot. The gang of evildoers receives its instructions from a shadowy figure behind a screen who keeps his latest secret hidden inside a deadly electrified wall, but no one knows the full evil plot or can see the mastermind's face. Could Mabuse be engineering the whole thing from his cell?

Once again this Mabuse features a strong international cast, with Helmut Schmid (The Head) and a turn by the always excellent Senta Berger as good girl Nelly. Also be sure to look for Günter Meisner, better known as Mr. Slugworth from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the iron lung Nazi from In a Glass Cage, as one of Mabuse's cronies. The film itself holds up very well on its own terms and delivers plenty of twists and thrills along the way; the catchy jazz/lounge score is also a major asset.

Only fleetingly released in the U.S. by Thunder Pictures in dubbed form as The Terror of the Mad Doctor and The Terror of Dr. Mabuse, this was the only other Mabuse film issued by AllDay on DVD in 2000; they lovingly presented the main feature with its original German soundtrack intact (with optional subtitles) along with the serviceable English dub. Once again it was taken from an interlaced PAL source without running time correction, squeezed from 1.66:1 to 1.78:1. The disc also includes one fascinating extra, The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse, the 75-minute '50s recut of Lang's original classic with an English dubbed soundtrack. It isn't close to a replacement for the two hour original, but this is a nice extra and features image quality comparable to an above average public domain tape. The comic-style menus lead to the same gallery of poster art from all of the Mabuse films, ranging from Lang's silent 1922 original (Dr. Mabuse the Gambler) to the rarely seen Franco installment. There's also another great Kalat commentary, but since that was timed to a now outdated master, it's been replaced with an updated and refined one on the Eureka Blu-ray; again it's a terrific listen as he covers the connections between this and Lang's original, Brauner's desire to revisit the source material on numerous occasions, the one-time switch to director Werner Klinger, and the film's spotty release history. The source material for the film itself is once again immaculate with the German original and English dub audio in great shape as well, with optional English subtitles. A Lucas intro (7m58s) is sort of a direct sequel to his one for Thousand Eyes as he continues tracing Brauner's desire to have his own Testament and the circumstances that led to this unusual stab at revisiting a major German classic. Also included are the German and U.S. trailers.

Also on disc three is the least seen film in this series (at least among English speakers), 1963's Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (or Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse), also known as Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard. The main titles cite this as an adaptation of Bryan Edgar Wallace's novel The Device (which it is, more or less), which makes this a crossover of sorts with CCC's run of films involving the author starting with 1962's The Secret of the Black Trunk, continuing the same year as this film with the excellent The Mad Executioners and The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, and ending with Jess Franco's The Corpse Packs His Bags in 1972 (unless you count the very iffy attempts to pass off two Dario Argento films and The Dead Are Alive as Wallace titles in West Germany). It was also inevitable that this series would have to bring in Klaus Kinski at some point given his prevalence at the time in Krimis, Edgar Wallace and otherwise, though here he gets to play a British detective instead of his usual twitchy neurotics.

In fact, this marks a shift overall in the series as it finally goes into Wallace territory by relocating the action to England, with Peter van Eyck (who had made The Longest Day in the interim) coming back to the series in a different role as Major Bill Tern. As we see in the opener, the metaphysical Mabuse is back taking over Dr. Pohland (Rilla) since the evil genius had extensive plans written down in his last will to carry out after his demise. Now the latest scheme involves a mind control camera that can cause its subjects to carry out insidious acts against their will, which leads to havoc in England, a royal kidnapping plot, and the hypnosis of various citizens including Kinski. Werner Peters is back again as usual, this time in a rare good guy role as Kinski's partner, Inspector Wright, who teams up with Bill to solve the case before it's too late.

The influence of the Wallace Rialto series is heaviest in this entry, which even includes a prominent role for irascible scene stealer Agnes Windeck as Bill's crime-solving mother (basically a variation on the terrific role she had earlier in the same year's The Squeaker). Compared to the prior four films, this one looks a bit cheaper (fewer location changes and ambitious sets) and has workmanlike direction from another one-off, Paul May, but it's still pulpy fun with a strong roster of actors. Dumped straight to TV in the U.S., this one made a brief appearance on VHS from Something Weird and was trimmed down a bit for its English-language dub including part of the opening Mabuse monologue. You get both language options on the Eureka Blu-ray, with German subs supplied for the missing English footage, though the original German track is obviously the preferable option. A new Kalat audio commentary charts out the Bryan Edgar Wallace connection, the recurring actors, the significance of Kinski's presence, the innovations to the Mabuse concept in this variant, and the diminishing presence of Preiss and the Mabuse character in general by this point. Also on disc four is "Kriminology" (30m17s), a new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson which devotes its first half to the making of Thousand Eyes and its Langian elements, then the rest to the resurrection of the character as a transforamtive force in the subsequent films. A Lucas video intro (8m37s) covers the major points of the film as well, including pondering the influence of North by Northwest and reasons for the location jump.

By the time of the last film in the set on disc five, The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse, Eurospy fever had taken hold thanks to the first two James Bond films with Goldfinger opening in theaters simultaneously with this one. The influence is obvious in this German-French-Italian co-production which has much more of a jet set vibe, something Rialto also brought to its Krimi series at the same time with the rare non-Wallace installment, Mark of the Tortoise. It's also the cheapest-looking film of the bunch, pointing the way to the Jess Franco territory to come; van Eyck is on hand again for the third time (with Rilla back as well), but other than the addition of Dieter Eppler here (one of the very best character actors in the Krimi canon), the cast is a random Euro-pudding of faces including a contribution by none other than British actor Leo Genn. Once again van Eyck changes character names (he's Major Bob Anders here) but pretty much plays the same guy, this time investigating "the most brilliant brain in espionage," Professor (no longer Doctor) Pohland, who's getting electroshock therapy in London thanks to Mabuse's intense hypnosis. Only one phrase comes out of Pohland's mouth before he's abducted in a sudden flash: "death rays." All signs point to something going on in Malta, where a frogman turned up dead and Professor Larsen (Hasse) is working on a revolutionary ray that everyone wants to acquire. Anders joins up with Larsen's niece, Gilda (Furneaux), for an adventure that leads to underwater action, fishy seamen, secret codes, and of course the massive death ray itself.

Likewise dumped straight to TV in the U.S., this film had one of the stronger English dubs (given that's what multiple actors were speaking) and was sometimes screened as The Death Ray Mirror of Dr. Mabuse, the title seen on its 2007 DVD release from Retromedia. Transfers of this one prior to the restoration were very heavily cropped and muddy, which did nothing to help the film's reputation; thankfully on Blu-ray it looks superb and makes for an enjoyable experience if you keep your expectations in check. Both the German and English audio options are here with optional subtitles, and you're really fine watching it either way. The last of the Kalat commentaries skillfully wraps this up as a culmination of the CCC cycle, with the company veering in different directions and the Mabuse element becoming almost an afterthought by this point but still interesting as it mutated into other genres.

The final Lucas intro (14m) also finds the finer points in the film, noting its inherited traits from decades of European pulp adventures, covering the state of Brauner and company at the time, and touching on the co-production status that led to multiple versions being created. Speaking of which, this also marks the English-friendly debut of the much longer alternate Italian version which clocks in at a whopping 109 minutes compared to the standard 91-minute one. It's presented here as a composite with the HD source slugged in wherever possible and SD for the rest, which makes for a fascinating comparison. Entitled I raggi mortali del Dr Mabuse, it's something of a mixed bag thanks to its slacker pacing and a vastly inferior replacement score by Marcello Gigante versus the far more energetic German one by Carlos Diernhammer. However, there are points of interest here including an additional romantic ending scene, some added dialogue scenes that fill in some of the plot gaps, and much, much more location footage. The limited edition set comes in a hardcase featuring art by Tony Stella and includes a 60-page book with notes on each film by Krimi!'s Holger Haase, a new essay by Tim Bergfelder, an archival essay by Cairns, archival writing by Lang, and notes by Lotte Eisner on Lang’s final unmade films.

THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (Eureka Blu-ray)

THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (AllDay DVD)

THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE (Eureka Blu-ray)

THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE (Retromedia DVD)

THE INVISIBLE DR. MABUSE (Eureka Blu-ray)

THE INVISIBLE DR. MABUSE (Retromedia DVD)

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Eureka Blu-ray)

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (AllDay DVD)

THE DEATH RAY OF DR. MABUSE (Eureka Blu-ray)

THE DEATH RAY OF DR. MABUSE (Retromedia DVD)

Reviewed on March 17, 2025