Gustav Diessl, Henry Bless, Karl Meixner

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88% liked it

4,065 ratings

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90% liked it

10 critics

Unrated, 2 hrs. 2 min.

Directed by: Fritz Lang

Release Date: January 1, 1933

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DVD Release Date: May 18, 2004

Stats: 215 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (215)


  • October 7, 2009
    In spite of the efforts of men like psychiatrist Johannes Schultz and Gustave Le Bon, hypnosis was often viewed as something supernatural or other-worldly well into the mid-twentieth century. This was not lost on German director Fritz Lang who made full use of public misconcepti...( read more)on here in his sequel to M. Though it's science is flawed, the rest of the film is well ahead of it's time.

    Lang's use of sound to tie scenes together (i.e. a ticking time-bomb becomes a man tapping on his breakfast egg) worked so well that similar effects are still being used today. The specter of Dr. Mabuse and his hypnotic mind control manifests itself in ghostly apparitions which Lang presents in transparent fashion, complete with makeup that is almost as effective and frightening today as it was in 1933.

    Don't expect this to be in the same league as Lang's landmark crime drama, M (to compare the two would be unfair). The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is much more of a ghost story, a horror film, than it's predecessor but it is very much a classic in it's own right. Anchored in realism but delving far further into the macabre and the surreal.
  • March 8, 2009
    Fritz Lang always makes such an interesting study, and despite having not seen the rest of the series, I really enjoyed this film. Lang's oeuvre is a forerunner to many of the films - and genres themselves - that we've come to take for granted. This installment in the series is a...( read more) gangster film, effectively, except for the gang is more hell-bent on terrorist objectives than good old-fashioned cash-grabbing. Now add a haunting on top of the standard gangster fare, and make it all look like the first noir film you can imagine... you're basically there. Not the easiest to watch (as it's over 70 years old and the editing jumps around due simply to the restoration efforts made), but well worth it, once you're into it Lang's film proves exciting. And of particular note, there's one scene where an evil directive to the gang of terrorists is found to be coming from a recording... still quite topical, surprisingly...
  • March 25, 2008
    "the testament of dr. mabuse" is fritz lang's perverse thriller upon mental hypnotization as manipulative apparatus of evil saboteurs.

    dr. mabuse is a deranged assylum patient who scrabbles abstract manuscripts to puzzle his patriachist who descends as his surrogate puppet h...( read more)eadleader of underground destructive activities. eventually evil is infectious in its ceaseless delivering.

    the scene of patriachist being possessed by dr. mabuse's evil spirit is macabrely spooky. mabuse with piercing sight and slanted sharp nose penetrates into the doctor's soul, and the envirnoment is hauntingly surrounded with the disfigured skulls of abnormal sinister men upon the shelf as specimen. one evil passes forward another as the vicious circle that is a metaphor of nazi's brain-rinsing control over the germany.

    lang transcends the patriachist/inmate reversion into a mythical analogy of social criticism, and the case pf dr. mabuse would be one of early cinematic human-beast who pestles the world in his absolute demonology that is satan conquers all in the end, far more sinister than the anthony hopkins' "cannibal lecter".
  • January 20, 2008
    Great psychological crime drama from the master Fritz Lang
  • December 4, 2007
    cool early german crime thriller expressing the common theme of man's anxiety in the industrial age. very good special effects for 1933! mabuse reminds me of a bond villain
  • November 7, 2009
    Rooms flood, lots of explosions, hypnotism, ghosts, guns, car chases, and romance with details like "I don't care that you kill people, i love you for some reason!"

    Lang's ahead his time and Dr.Mabuse feels like it could be a great Batman or Bond flick. Awesome.
  • August 15, 2009
    There is a lot of neat stuff in here, the special effects of the ghost of Mabuse was just so cool, but in other parts the film dragged. All I wanted to do was to edits some scenes out, the unbearable long fire scene at the chemical plant, ,but especially the flashback scenes whic...( read more)h I felt were unnecessary. Overall it was just okay.
  • May 19, 2009
    Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) is the story of a police inspector's attempt to stop some criminals who are counterfeiting money and murdering people. The inspection gets kind of weird as the criminals seem to be ordered around by a guy nam...( read more)ed Dr. Mabuse who is in an insane asylum and will not speak or do much of anything. This film is actually the second film in a trilogy of films pertaining to Dr. Mabuse, but the other two films aren't particularly famous. I thought this was pretty interesting although the ending seemed kind of underwhelming.

    For an early sound film, this film is particularly noteworthy for its rather sophisticated use of sound. Like Lang's previous film, M the sound techniques used in this film are rather advanced. Both films make use of leitmotif, a recurring musical theme pertaining to a particular place, person, or idea. The film also uses sound that is misidentified by the audience (a pocketwatch spring unwinding, intended to simulate a telephone's ring; a gunshot masked by the sound of car horns; the ticking of a bomb changing to a spoon tapping on an eggshell). The film also had some pretty advanced special effects considering the time it was made.

    While this film is certainly pretty good, it does not live up to Lang's M which is a vastly superior film. This may be more enjoyable than Lang's Metropolis, but realistically it's not as good as that film either. This is definitely worth viewing, but this won't go down as one of cinema's masterpieces like the aforementioned films.

    81/100
    B-
  • March 12, 2009
    a touch weaker than its predesessor, yet it maintains the quintessential Fritz Lang look and never lets you down when it comes to psychotic over-acting German madmen.
  • February 7, 2009
    Fantastic, underrated Lang film.

Comments


  • danperry17
    March 8, 2009
    Good call, Ruby Stevens, Mabuse is totally a Bond villain prototype!

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