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Mabuse Lives! Dr. Mabuse at CCC: 1960-1964 - Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th April 2025). |
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The Film
 "Fritz Lang made two of the defining works of early German cinema with Dr Mabuse, the Gambler and The Testament of Dr Mabuse, two masterpieces centred on Norbert Jacques’ nefarious literary supervillain. In 1960, Lang was charged by Artur Brauner’s CCC Film with making a third crime thriller centred on the infamous Dr Mabuse, completing a trilogy nearly forty years in the making. A huge success, The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse gave CCC the confidence to launch into an entire series focused on the master criminal between 1960 and 1964, with Wolfgang Preiss filling the title role. All six films are presented here alongside a wealth of new and archival extras." The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse: Although he died institutionalized back in 1932, many of his criminal cohorts have long believed that megalomaniacal mastermind Dr. Mabuse is still alive; and he is just who Interpol suspects of a string of murders linked only to the victims' stays at Berlin's Hotel Luxor: the latest being news reporter Peter Barter whose death of an apparent heart attack in his car in the middle of traffic is revealed to be murder only after police lieutenant Kras (Ten Little Indians' Gert Fröbe) was advised to look deeper by psychic Cornelius (Mill of the Stone Women's Wolfgang Preiss) who had phoned Kras about the crime as it was being committed. Although Interpol has installed a spy at the hotel, Kras is ignorant of the connection to the other crimes and is brought there by the suicide attempt of unhappy Marion Menil (The Vampire Lovers' Dawn Addams) who is talked down from a ledge high above the city by American industrialist Henry Travers (The Wages of Fear's Peter van Eyck) who is in the city to purchase a nuclear power plant with the goal of building rockets. As Travers finds himself falling in love with the mysterious Marion who is in hiding from her abusive husband, someone else seems to have taken an interest in either one or both of them since there is more technologically sophisticated surveillance devices in the hotel than the false mirror the hotel detective Berg (Black Sunday's Andrea Cecchi) has shown Travers to spy on Marion. Upon learning that Barter had been harassing Marion before his death, Kras suspects that she may have had something to do with his death along with Cornelius whose predictions are too accurate and Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage's Werner Peters) who purports to consult the stars when selling life insurance to his clients (the latest having been Barter). After Kras' gambit of feeding false information to his three suspects results in an explosive attempt on his life, he agrees to a séance conducted by Cornelius – who has since sensed great danger for Travers in the form of a woman – in which the long forgotten name of Mabuse is invoked. After producer Artur Brauner bankrolled the epic two-part Technicolor spectacle The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, director Fritz Lang – recently returned to post-WWII Germany after his increasingly compromised Hollywood career – was obligated to a vehicle signifying the return of his most famous character Dr. Mabuse who first appeared in the silent two-parter Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler followed by the sound film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. An invention of the post-WWI Germany, underworld criminal Dr. Mabuse used his diabolical intellect to wreak havoc on the stock market and the ruination of rich men in the former film and as a Hitler stand-in (during his rise to Chancellor of Germany) in the latter. The Dr. Mabuse of the 1960 film is as much an insane acolyte as a symbolic presence of totalitarian elements in a defeated Germany that was nevertheless booming economically, with Mabuse operating out of a hotel built during the war and used by the Nazis to spy on wealthy members of society. Here, he is directing all of the narrative threads, both leading Kras with clues and misdirecting him, manipulating a love affair to his own material ends, and ordering deaths carried out by a hitman (The Awful Dr. Orlof's Howard Vernon) who is ice cold but nevertheless seems to also have bought into the "the only time you ever see Dr. Mabuse's face is right before you die" mythos. Adams and van Eyck are a mostly dull center amidst plenty of serial intrigues, while Fröbe, Preiss, Peters, Cecchi, and Vernon are much more interesting in "character" roles with Adams only coming to life in moments she most mirrors Lang's Hollywood noir heroines. Along with a vague retread as part of his contract with Jess Franco in The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse, Brauner spun the film off into four official sequels between 1961 and 1964 included in this set, but the film was also stylistically influential on the krimi series of Edgar Wallace adaptations for Rialto Film (for which Brauner did a rival series purportedly based on works by Bryan Edgar Wallace). The film was more recently treated to a comic redub/reedit as Die 1000 Glotzböbbel vom Dr. Mabuse.  Although The Return of Dr. Mabuse appears to be a direct sequel to The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, Fröbe is Inspector Lohmann – the name of the hero of Lang's earlier M. and the 1933 Mabuse film – this time around on the case when a government agent is murdered on a train while carrying evidence about communication between an unknown local criminal organization and the Chicago syndicate. When one of two Chicago liaisons (Duel of the Titans' Laura Solari) is burned to death in the middle of the street without identifying her partner, Lohmann and his partner Detective Voss (U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien's Joachim Mock) are dogged in their investigation by intrepid reporter Maria Sabrehm (The Whip and the Body's Daliah Lavi) and American CIA agent Joe Como (La dolce vita's Lex Barker) as he traces a single clue – a criminology text with a chapter on Dr. Mabuse – to the Reverend Brietenstein (Dr. Crippen's Rudolf Fernau). Although Brietenstein insists that Mabuse is "personification" of a type of megalomaniacal criminality, Lohmann believes Mabuse is indeed alive and the phantom voice that warns him off the case; nevertheless Lohmann persists in his investigation which takes him to the prison and the mysterious warden Wolf (Cry of a Prostitute's Fausto Tozzi) and Department D run by Böhmler (Werner Peters again) which houses not only hulking Chicago mob hitman Alberto Sandro (The Dead Eyes of London's Ady Berber) but also Maria's insane chemist father Julius Sabrehm (The Mad Executioners's Rudolf Forster) still toiling away in his own personal lab. As each lead is assassinated before Lohmann can learn anything from them, he begins to doubt the motives and identities of those around him, from Maria, Wolf, and Böhmler to even his partner Voss and Como who may know more than he claims.  Lohmann is out but Como (Barker) is back in The Invisible Dr. Mabuse when called back to Berlin by Inspector Brahm (The Sinister Monk's Siegfried Lowitz) to identify the body of fellow agent Nick Prado (The Secret of the Black Trunk's Alain Dijon) discovered on the docks in a theatrical trunk. The only other party who has shown up to view the party is Liane Martin (Topaz's Karin Dor) who claims not to recognize the dead man; however, she just happens to be playing Marie Antoinette in an operetta at the Metropol, the last known location of Prado on the night of his death. Como has no success questioning the staff who all seem to be afraid of the play's circus clown Bobo (unlike Mabuse's disguises, this is unmistakably Werner Peters under the make-up), and the death of the night watchman (Walter Bluhm) in an apparent accident suggests Como is on the right track. A mysterious voice on the phone claiming to be her husband warns Como away from Liane but she claims not to be married, but she does seem to be cracking up claiming that a man she cannot see is terrorizing her. When Como receives a letter in disappearing ink from "an old friend," he suspects that Dr. Mabuse is still among the living while Brahm and comic relief underling Hase (The Black Spider's Walo Lüönd) believe Mabuse is a smokescreen in trying to discover who in the criminal underworld is trying to get their hands on Enterprise X: a technology that can render matter invisible being developed by Professor Erasmus (Rudolf Fernau again) who suffered an auto accident months before but who, according to his colleague Dr. Bardorf (The Man with the Glass Eye's Kurd Pieritz), has been hard at work in a secure laboratory even though he himself has not laid eyes on the man. With the series taken over for the next to entries by director Harald Reinl and screenwriter Ladislas Fodor – who would script the rest of the series along with Brauner's and Reinl's two-parr of Lang's silent telling of Die Nibelungen: Siegfried – The Return of Dr. Mabuse and The Invisible Dr. Mabuse make more obvious the influences of and the influences on competing studio Rialto's Edgar Wallace films – the style of which was usually more attributed to the series' other regular director Alfred Vohrer (The Creature with the Blue Hand) – which had officially begun with Reinl's The Fellowship of the Frog who would be attracted back to Rialto with box office draw Barker for the Karl May Old Shatterhand and Winnetou westerns starting with The Treasure of the Silver Lake and wife Dor as the ingenue of various Wallace thrillers like The Sinister Monk. Watching the Reinl Mabuse and Wallace films also makes more obvious the director's stylistic stamp o the series, particularly in the context of his later Barker/Dor vehicle The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, a period Gothic that is more overtly supernatural and garishly colorful but features similar stalwart heroes, damsels in distress, abductions (by coach instead of car), sinister agents of the villains (sometimes in disguise), a late introduction to the main villain, and transforms the high-tech traps of the Mabuse films into an elaborate labyrinthine medieval torture dungeon. Both films feature female love interests who are as likely femme fatales as they are heroines – Maria deliberately holds back information while Liane comes across as suspicious as much due to her job as an actress as the machinations unfolding around here that have already claimed the life of a character mistakenly believed to be pursuing her – who is somehow tied to a scientist developing a drug or technology that a Mabusian figure could use to sow terror, and Mabuse (or possibly a disciple) has either been in disguise as one of a seeming red herring the entire time or eventually assumes their identity in order to flaunt his lawlessness while under surveillance. The question of whether Mabuse himself or someone psychologically "possessed" by the dead madman's will or someone else who merely embodies the same idea remains in question up until the climaxes of both films, and it is just as believable that he might not have survived as it is that he has slipped away. The Return of Dr. Mabuse is probably the more "realistic" and straightforward while The Invisible Dr. Mabuse repeats the formula but replaces the prison with the Metropol – which horror fans may recognize from Lamberto Bava's Demons – in a sort of mishmash of "The Phantom of the Opera" and The Invisible Man. The film's invisibility effects are standard fishing line with a few opticals and even a bit of animation in the climax, but the climactic unmasking is less conventional than the previous film.  The Testament of Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss) has finally snapped and is institutionalized, spending his days scribbling notes that are either nonsensical or in a code or language of his own understanding, diagnosed by Professor Pohland (The Face of Fu Manchu's Walter Rilla) as graphomania, but Inspector Lohmann (Gert Fröbe) remains wary of Mabuse even in this state. Responding to an armored car robbery and a diamond exchange heist, Lohmann believes the hand behind them can only be Mabuse, which may also be the suspicion of the gang of thieves who has sworn allegiance along with their leader Mortimer (The Black Abbot's Charles Regnier) to a shadow and a voice who punishes anyone trying to discover his identity with death, including one of the gang who attempts to peak behind the curtain, necessitating Mortimer to find a replacement in losing boxer Johnny Briggs (The Salzburg Connection's Helmut Schmid) who has no qualms about theft, forgery, and counterfeiting but draws the line at murder. Although Lohmann has managed to interpret the plans behind the heists in Mabuse's notes, he has no idea how they are getting out to the doctor's criminal disciples, and he may have let his own lead slip through his fingers because it comes from a disgraced officer (One, Two, Three's Leon Askin) who has taken it upon himself to infiltrate Mortimer's gang but is murdered before he can say the M-word. Professor Pohland dismisses Lohmann's belief that Mabuse is somehow relaying his plans from within his cell, but he may be endangering his own life by attempting to probe the criminal mind for the last will and testament of Mabuse. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse shares its German title with the aforementioned 1933 Lang sound film. Although it is not exactly a remake, it does incorporate elements from the plot and even imitates some sequences almost shot-for-shot but within different contexts and a different sequence of events. Those who have seen the 1933 film will not be too surprised at the film's twists but may appreciate how the film plays with expectations based on them. Director Werner Klingler is less of a visual stylist than Reinl, and the most of the film is rather listless even in the midst of action set-pieces, only picking up at the hour mark as Mabuse reveals just how lucid he really is and the pace finally picks up and better suits the action. Fröbe is given less to do, and his comic relief partner (Golden Goddess of Rio Beni's Harald Juhnke) is less entertaining even as he name drops various detective story titles and authors – including an in-joke to Edgar Wallace – Schmid provides muscle and fisticuffs but is no Lex Barker, and Senta Berger (Diabolically Yours) is the first of the series increasingly marginalized love interests literally only here to be put in danger. Even the final scene is rather limp in setting up doubt as to whether Mabuse has "survived" or not.  Without any real explanation as to the aftermath of the denouement of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Professor Pohland is back as Scotland Yard Hunts for Dr. Mabuse and busting out disgraced and criminally-negligent British doctor George Cockstone (The Phantom of Soho's Dieter Borsche), giving him a new face through plastic surgery and enlisting him to obtain a device being developed by Professor Lawrence (Alfred Braun) that make the minds of other subservient and telepathically communicate orders. Cockstone becomes Dr. Ranke, Lawrence's trusted colleague to obtain the device, testing it on a mail carrier (Frozen Alive's Sigurd Lohde) who murders the professor. Inspector Vulpius (Werner Peters as a good guy) is puzzled when the man admits to the murder while being unable to explain why he did it. Pohland and Cockstone head to England, leaving behind a lab explosion in which Ranke is supposedly killed with items meant to make the police believe the body was actually that of Cockstone; however, British agent Major Bill Tern (Peter Van Eyck returning) is skeptical and is the first to make the connection between the Lawrence's murder, the mysterious suicide of his colleague Professor Masterson who had developed a companion device to resists the effects of Lawrence's mind control device, and the theft of Princess Diana's (Ruth Wilbert) necklace by her own husband who also was unable to explain why he did it other than a voice giving him orders. As members of the British government and military announce their plans to overthrow the old order, Tern, Vulpius, and British detective Joe Wright (The Creature with the Blue Hand's Klaus Kinski) know that there there must be a more powerful hand behind Cockstone, but Mabuse is dead as is Professor Pohland supposedly. Fortunately, Tern's avid crime story-reading mother (The Horror of Blackwood Castle's Agnes Windeck) has some outlandish ideas that might just point them in the right direction. Loosely based on a novel by Bryan Edgar Wallace into which Mabuse has been inserted, Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse ventures further into Edgar Wallace territory with a bit of James Bond not only by virtue of the setting – although it seems more contemporary London than the Wallace series mix of swinging sixties and foggy Jack the Ripper cobblestone backstreets – but also some direct references from Tern's mother reading a thriller novel about a killer gorilla to Tern and Wright attending a meeting also attended by a character named Sir John who was usually the Scotland Yard comic relief superior of various detectives in the Wallace series and usually played by Siegfried Schürenberg but not here. There are more crossover supporting actors between the two series including Windeck and Ady Berber who makes a special appearance as a hangman. Paul May (Duel with Death) fares better than Klinger on the previous film, but the problem here is too many detectives, Cockstone seeming more of an equal than a puppet of Mabuse, and particularly too much Mabuse as Rilla's Pohland is more conversational and conciliatory than commanding, and he even turns up at various locations of the action rahter than acting from a distance as a menacing shadow. There remains an ambiguity as to whether Mabuse is a ghost or a free-floating will that possesses Pohland and leaves him when he may die or if Pohland's own mind has taken on Mabuse's personality and it departs him when he realizes that he has failed. Kinski's Wright and Peters' Vulpius have little to do but Van Eyck's Tern is engaging and has more chemistry with his mother than with love interest Nancy (Erotik auf der Schulbank's Sabine Bethmann) who is so incidental to the plot that the two major scenes introducing her were cut from the English version – the fact that the cut scenes also included the suicide of Professor Masterson and details of Princess Diana's necklace theft with no direct effect on the rest of the film are indicative of poor writing – and is even forgotten about in the German version only to then turn up an hour into the running time to play damsel in distress alongside Wilbert. Fortunately, the last half-hour is action-oriented and entertaining with a more fitting turning of the tables on Mabuse despite having to leave things open for the possibility of another entry in the series.  In The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse, Major Bill Tern's seemingly-unacknowledged double Major Ken Anders (Peter Van Eyck) does not believe that Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla) was possessed by Dr. Mabuse or is under the delusion that Mabuse "used his brain." He is convinced that Pohland was a front for Mabuse and his current amnesia is due to a post-hypnotic suggestion. He orders Pohland's doctor (The Odessa File's Ernst Schröder) to subject him to electroshock therapy hoping to loosen Mabuse's hold on him. Pohland manages to utter the words "death ray" before the power is cut and orderly Kaspar (Slaughter of the Vampires' Dieter Eppler) knocks Anders out and abducts the professor. With no further leads, his superior Commander Matson (Where Eagles Dare's Robert Beatty) redirects his attentions away from his Mabuse obsession to the Maltese coastal village of Belmar where a number of frogmen (scuba divers) have washed up on the shore, suspected to be enemy agents trying to gain access to the below sea level laboratory of Professor Larsen (I Confess' O.E. Hasse) who is coincidentally developing a powerful heat ray inspired by Archemides' mirrors but exponentially more destructive, farther-reaching, and pinpoint precise that could very well be used as a death ray if it falls into the wrong hands; unfortunately, Larsen does not want England's protection that would come with funding and they suspect that other parties may be courting him. Anders arrives on Malta with a girlfriend cover in Judy (Black Sabbath's Rika Dialyna) who is not an agent, just a moron. It seems, however, as though everyone knows who he is from the various businesses serving as fronts for England's naval operations run by the mysterious Admiral Quency (Night of the Blood Monster's Leo Genn) and Larsen's spiritual colleague Dr. Krishna (The Indian Tomb's Valéry Inkijinoff) to Larsen's socialite niece Gilda (Repulsion's Yvonne Furneaux) – who is being courted by the Monta brothers Mario (The Valley of Gwangi's Gustavo Rojo) and Jason (Sodom and Gomorrah's Massimo Pietrobon) who own the island's largest cannery and are descended from pirates – naval colleague Commander Adams (Uncle Tom's Cabin's Charles Fawcett) and town archivist and museum curator Dr. Botani (The Facts of Murder's Claudio Gora) and his sexy secretary (First Spaceship on Venus' Yôko Tani), as well as the agents of a mysterious presence that try to kill Anders any time he is alone. Anders knows that Dr. Mabuse is behind it all, but he does not know whose face he is wearing. With The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse, the Mabuse series goes full Bond mode with Germany fully standing in for England, an exotic backdrop in Malta, Van Eyck's man of action flirting with and bedding various ladies whose attractiveness and attraction to Anders appears to be their only distinguishing features. Despite more action, this is easily the least of the series and it is understandable why Brauner and CCC scaled down considerably for Franco's Mabuse entry and his two Bryan Edgar Wallace entries The Devil Came from Akasava and The Corpse Packs His Bags (itself a remake of their first Bryan Edgar Wallace production The Secret of the Black Trunk). As usual, there are several characters but all of their relevance to the plot is to fill space with the Monta brothers talked up but making little impact, Furneaux's love interest severely underwritten and easily overshadowed by Dialyna who takes over the comic relief role while also wearing very little – the scene in which Judy slyly insults Gilda upon meeting her is one of the film's highlights – and Genn's dual role more distracting than clever. The Malta setting does call back to the Wallace series with some web-shrouded abbeys and catacombs with skeletons in suits of armor but here Rilla's Pohland gets the Preiss treatment of blink-and-you'll-miss-it screentime while Preiss himself is relegated to stock footage (he revealed in an interview that he did not know he was even in the film until he saw it). Although it predates Thunderball, the film climaxes in an underwater frogman fight that is just as much a slog as that of the Bond film. Jobbing director Hugo Fregonese was rewarded for directing this film with helming Old Shatterhand, the second of several pairings between Barker's hero and Winnetou but would also be one of the directors to leave the troubled Assignment: Terror. A West German/British/Italian co-production, the film was largely shot in Tuscany in place of Malta and photographed by Antonio Margheriti-regular Riccardo Pallottini (Castle of Blood) and features a score of jazzy noodlings by Argentinian musician Carlos Diernhammer and electronic sounds by Oskar Sala (The Birds). 
Video
A West German/French/Italian co-production, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse was released theatrically in those countries between 1960 and 1961 (with the French version featuring a slightly different ending as discussed below), in America in 1960 by Associated Producers – a company formed by Robert Lippert to provide B-features for Fox double features – and in 1962 in the U.K. by Golden Era Distributors. Although the film made the rounds on grey market mail order video labels, All Day Entertainment's David Kalat found it difficult to source materials even from Brauner but eventually managed to release the film on DVD in 2000 as the first volume of The Diabolical Cinema of Dr. Mabuse (followed only by a second volume featuring The Terror of Dr. Mabuse with the American version of the 1932 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse as an extra). A superior transfer followed in the U.K. in 2009 as part of The Complete Fritz Lang Mabuse Box Set. We have not seen the French Blu-ray but Eureka's 2020 Blu-ray looked spectacular compared to the DVD versions. Eureka was not specific about the specs of their master for the original Blu-ray but their new 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen appears to be the same master given a new encode as part of the disc's reauthoring to add extras. From the opening rear projection driving scenes (not just the views through the windshields but of the Berlin streets behind a line of slow-moving cars on a soundstage) to Preiss' blind psychic make-up job, Addam's glamour, matted-in video monitors, and an examination of the surface elegance of the Hotel Luxor, there is a wondefully tactile sense of texture that plays up the film's surveillance element; indeed, the definition is such that one at first worries that a couple scenes including part of a dining room conversation between Addams and Van Eyck has been patched in by the coarsening and higher contrast only for the camera to pull back to reveal that it is being watched on a video monitor.  The Return of Dr. Mabuse did not reach screens in the U.S. and U.K. until 1966 – the latter slightly trimmed for violence – with the U.S. version retitled "The Phantom Fiend" and the "Return" title restored to television prints. The film has made the public domain rounds on VHS and DVD under both titles, with Retromedia's Dr. Mabuse Collection triple feature at least offering a more recent digital transfer of 16mm materials. At the time that David Kalat's All Day Entertainment was trying to release the Mabuse films on DVD, this was one of the ones that CCC could not supply adequate materials; however, CCC got their act together about archiving a few years later and an anamorphic widescreen transfer turned up in 2005 on DVD as part of the Dr. Mabuses Meisterwerk six-disc set, and a newer HD master followed as part of the Blu-ray upgrade in 2019, the master also presumably the source for Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray which finally turns a film that once looked like a bunch of smudgy grays and blooming whites into a sleek noir work. Faces gleam lit from below, some surprising bloodshed now looks much more grisly and its hard to believe it played like this on U.S. television, and now it is apparent that Preiss is not playing the character he is disguised as, only actually turning up onscreen for his unmasking.  The Invisible Dr. Mabuse arrived ahead of its predecessor theatrically in the U.S. and U.K. – the former titled "The Invisible Horror" and the latter once again with slight cuts – while the original English export title was restored to U.S. television prints which were the source of various PD releases. Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray is presumably sourced from the same 2K restoration by CCC. The noirish blacks and more stable highlights are restored, and it becomes more apparent which invisibility effects were executed on the set and which are opticals (the shot in which the camera looks through the eyes of the invisible man's opera glasses was obviously done in post now because the solid metal barrels are transparent and some of the action on the stage shows through them). Also more apparent than the PD transfers is the shininess of Mabuse's mask in a few shots after his identity has been established as a disguise and before the melting finale.  The Testament of Dr. Mabuse made it stateside theatrically as "The Terror of the Mad Doctor" while the U.K. version had some BBFC trims. The film was first released on DVD in Germany by Polyband as part of their "Krimi Classics" line framed at 1.78:1 followed by the OAR transfer in the aforementioned Universum DVD set followed by the Blu-ray set. Brauner's own personal passion project, the film benefits from a slightly higher budget with well-lit interiors and exteriors, looking strikingly sharp in the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer with the film's expressionistic lighting and use of shadow, only looking bad during the hall of mirrors sequence in which it appears the cameraman was unable to keep the multiple reflections of the terrorized couple in focus.  Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse also went straight to U.S. TV as "Dr. Mabuse vs Scotland Yard" in a version that ran about ten minutes shorter – the tirmmed footage mentioned above in the film review – and was hard to see after that apart from TV runs through Screen Gems packages, while the aforementioned Universum DVD and Blu-ray editions were uncut but not English-friendly. Like The Testament of Dr. Mabuse's transfer, Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.37:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer is one of the best-looking of the set thanks to the brightly-lit photography and predominance of daylight exterior scenes with only the usual London stock footage and a few opticals of the mind control machine (along with the possession shots of Mabuse) looking a tad coarser.  The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse went straight to U.S. television through Walter Manley Enterprises as "The Death Ray Mirror of Dr. Mabuse" which is what appeared on the Retromedia Mabuse set. A superior anamorphic offering appeared in the aforementioned Universum DVD and the later 2K restoration on the Blu-ray upgrade. Interestingly, in Italy, NoShame Films put out a DVD which featured the little-seen Italian version of the film that ran nearly twenty minutes longer – more on that below – while a subsequent edition from Sinister Film made the Italian version an extra while the main presentation was the German version. The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.37:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer is the most inconsistent of the set, presumably owing to the original photography, some optical work, and possibly also some patchwork. The electroshock scene looks dupey with grayish black and little detail in the highlights while other dark interiors and exteriors have a slicker noir-ish look. The underwater sequences are quite murky, presumably due to the water itself as well as the camera housing. 
Audio
The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse's audio options include a clean German LPCM 2.0 mono track and a fairly clean English LPCM 2.0 track - the film was acted in English so both versions are post-dubbed - with the latter reverting to German for one of Peters' outbursts during the séance scene. Optional English subtitles are available for the German track while a second track is enabled by default for German text when the English track is selected. The Return of Dr. Mabuse's German and English LPCM 2.0 mono tracks are very similar sounding in terms of music, effects, and the hiss during moments of silence while The Invisible Dr. Mabuse, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse's English and German tracks both sound cleaner. Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse's German track sounds fine but the English track is obviously derived from the shorter American materials so part of the first line of dialogue is in German with English subtitles along with the roughly nine minute chunk out of the middle. The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse was largely shot in English and post-dubbed and both tracks sound relatively clean and the lip sync issues on both tracks seems to be the fault of the original mix of German and English dialogue re-written to convey the plot as best it could compared to the Italian version (which might have been based on and refined from a rough cut that went from Germany to the Italians for dubbing and scoring before the German edit was locked). Optional English subtitles are available for all of the films – none of the English tracks are badly cast or acted but the German tracks and English subtitles just sound more consistent tonally – while an alternate subtitle track is enabled for the English dub for the German credits and a few instances of German onscreen text and signs. 
Extras
Extras for The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse are carried over from the earlier edition starting with the audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat which is the one he recorded for their 2009 DVD edition rather than the one for the 2000 Image DVD. He proposes some provocative points about why Mabuse should be so popular in 1960s Germany, Lang feeling obliged to make the film, and the ways in which Lang shatters and reorders elements of the earlier films into new configurations, using editorial discontinuity so that the story elements early on only make sense in their juxtaposition with one another, taking on meaning as the film precedes and as it is rewatched; indeed, Kalat makes the case that the film - although popular in Germany upon release - may be more interesting for viewers in the context of Lang's remaking than as more conventional entertainment. The disc also includes the alternate ending (1:05) found in French prints in which the final scene lingers for seconds more before the fade out, resulting in a different emotional reaction. Also included is a "A Conversation with Dr. M" (15:50), a 2002 interview with actor Preiss conducted by Uwe Huber in which the actor discusses his early acclaim, being typecast in war films, the new opportunities brought about by Lang casting him in the film, and his dwindling screen time in the subsequent film and discovering upon return from the U.S. that he was prominently billed in The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse in which he does not appear (with Brauner sheepishly revealing that scenes of him from the other films were cut into it). New to this release are the "Eye of Evil" 1966 U.S. re-release theatrical trailer (2:43) and a new introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (12:13) who discusses the pre-war Mabuse films, including the 1933 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse which was banned by Goebels and did not premiere in Berlin until 1951 where it was seen by CCC producer Brauner. Brauner was able to woo Lang back to West Germany by allowing him to remake The Tiger of Eschnaplur and The Indian Tomb, a project co-written in the twenties with his then-partner Thea von Harbou which had been taken away from him and given to Joe May for the 1921 two-parter. The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse would be Lang's last film but Lucas discusses the ways in which it anticipates our surveillance culture and how any imaginable invasion of privacy is probably already in practice. He also disusses the influence of the film on the Edgar Wallace films of rival Rialto – CCC would mount their own competing series ostensibly based on the novels of the writer's son Bryan Edgar Wallace, sometimes just attributing one of the Wallace's to the authorship of co-productions like Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage which was actually an uncredited riff on Frederic Brown's "The Screaming Mimi" or Umberto Lenzi's The Seven Blood-Stained Orchids which was a riff on Cornell Woolrich – including the cinematography of Karl Löb who was recruited by Rialto, and a passing mention of the only CCC Mabuse film not in this set by Jess Franco, a Spanish co-production released there as "La venganza del doctor Mabuse" but in Germany as Dr. M schlägt zu (anticipating Claude Chabrol's later French/German MTV-era take Dr. M).  The Return of Dr. Mabuse can be viewed preceded by an introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (8:55) which can also be played separately in which discusses the influence on the series of both director Reinl and writer Fodor – along with some background on co-writer Marc Behm (Help!) – and some of the other key onscreen presences like Barker who became big in Germany after this film leading to his subsequent German westerns. The film is also accompanied by a new audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat who discusses the influence of Reinl on the series, particuarly with reference to how CCC was attempting to co-opt the Wallace brand from Rialto who was using their sound stages by way of licensing Bryan Edgar Wallace's stories and making Wallace adjancent films, noting just how closely the film is modeled on the structure and plot elements of Fellowship of the Frog while also noting that the Lang film also shared some elements but does not believe that the intent was not the same. Kalat also discusses the shrinking screen time for actor Preiss throughout the subsequent entries.  The Invisible Dr. Mabuse is also accompanied by a new introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (6:28) on the influence on this entry of the Fantomas silents and the concurrent sixties feature trilogy as well as the increasing crossover with the Edgar Wallace krimis which it should be no surprise is also covered in the audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat in which he discusses subsequent entries in the Wallace series and further parallels including the recurrence in the Reinl entries of the stage milieu. He also notes that although we may be able to see through some of the character disguises here, Reinl both here and in the Wallace series had actors dubbed with different voices while in their different identities including Mabuse and Peters as Bobo the Clown and his other identity. He also discusses the film's borrowings from Feuillade with Mabuse becoming more like Fantomas, as well as the film's invisibility effects. The disc also includes "Mabuse Lives at CCC" 2025 interview with producer and managing director of CCC Film Alice Brauner, daughter of CCC founder Artur Brauner (15:54) who recalls her Polish immigrant father wanting to make films about the Holocaust experience that German audiences did not want to see and his hit cycles of films of the fifties onwards, and his collaboration with Lang before discussing the direction of CCC these days, renting out their studios to streaming series, preserving their library of films from vinegar syndrome, and continuing to distribute them worldwide. She also discusses the differences between the Mabuse series entries by director, not necessarily complementary of Jess Franco's works for Brauner but admitting that they sold well.  The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is accompanied by a German theatrical trailer (3:25) and a U.S. theatrical trailer (0:53) under the title "The Terror of the Mad Doctor" along with a new introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (7:58) – who notes that while the idea is attributed to von Harbou's screenplay for the Lang film, the posthumously-published Norbert-Jacques Mabuse work revealed a similar plot – Lucas suggests it may have been suppressed by the Nazis as a favor to von Harbou while Kalat offers a more complex and nuanced theory – as well Robert A. Stemmle – who scripted Robert Siodmak's The Treasure of the Aztecs and Pyramid of the Sun God for Brauner – was too important a writer to play second fiddle to Fodor and that it might have been the latter who polished the former's script in this case. In the audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat, Kalat notes that the 1933 film that had so inspired Brauner as a youth to want to make films was both a sequel to the silent Mabuse film as well as a sequel to Lang's M in sharing the Lohmann character as hero but also that the 1962 film is a sequel to The Invisible Dr. Mabuse, a crossover with M, and a reboot of the CCC series. He also posits that it is less of a remake than another retelling along with the Lang film of a basic scenario by Lang which was adapted into a novel by Norbert-Jacques (after Lang rejected the author's own sequel "Mabuse's Colony), a screenplay by Thea von Harbou, a German film approved by Lang, a German release version reconfigured by Goebbels with additional scenes positioning the story proper as a flashback to the days before the Nazis came to power, a French version directed by Lang with a different supporting cast and edited without his direct involvement using his notes, and a shorter English-dubbed version "The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse" which moved the time-frame up from 1933 to 1939 to directly associate Mabuse with Hitler (Kalat notes that this version was based on the German cut but had been released after an original subtitled American release of the German version without the Goebbels alterations). Kalat discusses the scenes carried and plot elements carried over from the Lang film and how they are reconfigured into a somewhat different story.  Scotland Yard versus Dr. Mabuse is accompanied by an introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (8:37) who discusses the film as a change in the Mabuse film formula at the expense of the series original personality, the source novel, comparing Bryan Edgar Wallace's writing to his father's, the CCC adaptations, and May's "workmanlike" direction. The audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat sounds as if it was the first recorded of the new tracks which is odd if one is listening to the new tracks in film order since he introduces some concepts here with a fresh air that sound rehashed in the other tracks, including a more in-depth discussion of the influence of the Wallace series, Rialto's hold on the brand name and its characteristic elements, as well as the five ways CCC attempted to co-opt the brand including leasing the studio to Rialto who had shot earlier entries in Copenhagen, a contractual agreement for a single Edgar Wallace production of their own in The Curse of the Yellow Snake, distributing the Wallace television films of Merton Park Studios – the U.K. producer who had the British rights to Wallace's works and name – in Germany, using key Rialto series onscreen and behind the scenes personnel in Wallace-like productions, and obtaining the German rights to Bryan Edgar Wallace's works for their original productions and the co-productions like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage for which Bryan Edgar Wallace was only credited in German materials. He then discusses the source novel which did not feature Mabuse and in which Cockstone was the main villain, noting that Fodor actually stripped out a lot of Mabusian elements in adapting the Wallace book, and how little actually survives beyond character names including Wallace's protagonist Tern. The disc also includes "Kriminology" (30:17), a video essay by film historians David Cairns & Fiona Watson who discusses the evolution of Mabuse from Lang's silent and the 1933 sound film to The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse which Lang made in place of Brauner's proposed remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in the context of Lang's pet themes as they carried over from Germany to Hollywood and the 1960 film's use of voyeurism, surveillance, and seances as well as the ways he too referenced and reconfigured scenes and sequences from his earlier filmography.  The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse shares its disc with the "I raggi mortali del Dr. Mabuse" (109:09), the aforementioned Italian version of the film which has been reconstructed from CCC's 2K master of the German version and Italian standard definition materials (presumably the Italian DVD or the Italian rights owner's digital master since Kalat notes in the commentary that there is no mention of this version in CCC's paperwork for the film). The quality is even more uneven as it switches between sources but it is an interesting variant with a handful of additional scenes ranging from filler to action, and even a disposable coda. The plot is better explained in the Italian dialogue (which has also been subtitled for the viewer) and the music scoring of Marcello Gigante (The Embalmer) better suits the Bondian ambitions of the film. This alone may make the set an essential purchase for fans of Eurospy Bond knockoffs. The film is accompanied by a new introduction by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas (14:00) minutes in which he has an easy time pointing out the various logical flaws of the plot, the cast and crew including Fregonese whose Hollywood career ended in acrimony leading to a period of Italian productions and the Mabuse film, familiar faces crossing over with the Wallace films, the Italian version of the film, and most intriguingly the behind the scenes story of one of the film's British co-producers in an investment scam with actor George Sanders (Hangover Square). In the audio commentary by film historian and author David Kalat, Kalat makes the case for finding things to savor in the film as a Mabuse and Bond fan while also discussing its "pointless" elements, the plot in the context of Umberto Eco's structure of the Bond novel formula – along with the use of three love interests and the instructions Roald Dahl received from the producers while adapting You Only Live Twice (which featured Karin Dor as one of the Bond girls) – the evolution of spy fiction from pre-war to Cold War contrasting realist approache slike John le Carré to escapism like Ian Fleming, the influence of Mabuse on the Bond films, and the Eurospy knockoff genre including the parodies. He also discusses the change of Van Eyck's character from Bryan Edgar Wallace's Bill Tern to Ken Anders, how the Tern character was already quite different from Wallace's hero, and suggests that the actor's and character's "cold fish" persona even when bedding three love interests is less of a misstep and more of a twist on the formula (leading to a discussion of the feminist turn of Claude Chabrol's own spy films and Kalat's argument that this for-hire period was more meaningful than some of Chabrol's critics and historians have dismissed). 
Packaging
The four discs art part of a limited collector's edition of 2,000 copies packaged in two keep cases within a hardcase featuring new artwork by Tony Stella with a 60-page collector's book featuring brief notes on each film by journalist Holger Haase, a new essay by German film scholar Tim Bergfelder – providing background on the founding of CCC by Brauner and his initial cinematic ambitions – an archival essay by David Cairns from the earlier Blu-ray which touches upon the appearance of a toy chimpanzee in the film, a 1961 interview extract with Lang by Jean-Louis Noames in which he touches upon the film as well as his contemporaries including Antonioni, Godard, and Peckinpah, along with "The Final, Unrealised Projects" by Lotte Eisner from 1976 which features two brief synopses with protagonists who either commit or contemplate suicide. 
Overall
Long dismissed as Lang's retread swan song and a bunch of knockoffs consigned to television and PD DVD, the film that comprise Eureka's Mabuse Lives! Dr. Mabuse at CCC: 1960-1964 demonstrate the super villain's continuing popularity in German - in the context of the country's own Edgar Wallace films and the burgeoning influence of the Bond franchise - and in the minds of adventurous cineastes.
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