You don't believe in occult forces? Neither in life beyond death? You haven't heard of Dr. Mabuse! Well, Mabuse is proof that all of this is real, you can see in this series with the infamous character. Another series that fascinated me when I was a kid. A lot of speech and less action than other movies in the series. We discover Mabuse only in the end. Until then, we see Peter van Eick, smoking almost all the time, cigarettes, as usual, and Gert Fröbe, smoking pipe, as usual.

Fritz Lang is a talented director. He's the guy who made "Metropolis," a startling vision of the future before such visions were cool. And he made "M", which turned a monster into an object of pity. In America, after slipping out of Germany, he directed a couple of fascinating noirs.But you wouldn't know it from "Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse." Even the always-interesting presence of Peter Van Eyck, Hollywood's Ur-German, and the almost unrecognizable Wolfgang Preiss, can't save this from being a fairly typical B-movie with a plot more confusing than most.After an opening that might have come directly from a Charlie Chan movie -- a victim collapses in public, shot in the head with an almost undetectable sliver of metal -- we are taken to a garishly made-up Dawn Addams perched on the ledge of a tall building, about to jump for reasons we know not of.She's talked in by Van Eyck and there follow innumerable perplexing plot developments organized around a couple of themes that don't seem to have much to do with one another.Lang often made good use of mirrors and he does so here. And Gert Frobe turns in a good performance as a shambling, good-natured, pipe-smoking detective.The story, though, is full of incidents that may be suspenseful in themselves without helping the plot in an immediate way. It plods along like somebody with a club foot.It's a disappointing piece of work, slow and uninteresting. Fans of Fritz may get more out of it than I did.

Fritz Lang's final movie saw him return to one of his greatest creations, the enigmatic criminal master Dr. Mabuse. Much like the influence this villain has over people in the movies, so was the influence he had over Lang, who made three distinct Dr. Mabuse movies in three different periods of his life.In The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse we go to post-war Germany. Mysterious, ingenious crimes are succeeding one after another, so brilliant in technique that the police remember the crimes of Dr. Mabuse, just before Hitler took over.Meanwhile a rich American industrialist is in Germany to close a deal. At the Luxor Hotel he saves a woman from committing suicide. But this altruistic gesture plunges him into a world of deception, blackmail, voyeurism and international crime.Trying to get to the bottom of this is Commissioner Kras, with the help of a shifty insurance salesman and a blind psychic.Lang's movies have always been ahead of their time. His silent movies showed an amazing understanding of the language of cinema, and when sound came he incorporated it into the movie as a storytelling tool and not just an excuse for talking heads. In this movie we see the genesis of modern thrillers like the Bond franchise: secret criminal empires, shadowy villains, cars with intricate gadgets, the use of secret cameras to spy on people, unique weapons. But even after fifty years, here it still looks fresh and bold.Much like The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, this is one of the best thrillers I've ever seen. It's suspenseful, it's surprising, and it's intelligent. Kras is not the moronic policeman we see so often in cinema; he's clever, he's good at deducing things. And Dr. Mabuse is always one step ahead, always has contingency plans, knows everything. How distant he is from the barely-articulate villains of our times.Any film lover will do himself a favor by watching this neglected gem.

Fritz Lang's "Die 1000 Augen Des Dr. Mabuse" aka. "The Thousand Eyes Of Dr. Mabuse" of 1960 is, after 27 years, the third movie on the arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse, the first one made after World War 2, and Lang's last movie as a director. Although not brilliant in any of its aspects, this is a very well-acted, highly entertaining and original mystery that maintains its suspense and stays interesting throughout its 100 minutes, as it cleverly bears more than one surprise.After a reporter is murdered on his way to a TV station in Wiesbaden, Comissioner Kras' (Gert Fröbe) investigations lead him to a local luxury hotel. As the investigations are dragging on without progress, Kras is offered the help of a mysterious blind psychic...The acting in "The 1,000 Eyes Of Dr Mabuse" is generally very good, especially Gert Fröbe, who would play the arch villain "Goldfinger" in the greatest James Bond movie four years later, delivers a great performance as the rough-and-ready police commissioner Kras. Further great performances come from Wolfgang Preiss, Dawn Addams, and Werner Peters, who plays and obtrusive insurance salesman. The movie remains interesting all the time, as there's one little twist after another, and just when you think that something was predictable, another twist is coming up. One noticeable quality of this movie is that director Lang, who had fled to the United States in the years of Naziism, dares to mention the Nazi times in the movie, which (allthough only mentioned casually once or twice) was more than rare in 1960, a time when popular German movies usually remained as silent as possible about this "unpleasant" subject."Die 1000 Augen Des Dr. Mabuse" is not one of Fritz Lang's masterpieces, but it definitely is a highly entertaining and clever mystery, that should not leave anybody bored. Recommended!