''The Secret of Dr. Mabuse'' or ''The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse'' (German:''Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse'') is a 1964 Franco-German-Italian international co-production

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

Eurospy

crime film Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

directed by Hugo Fregonese and Victor De Santis and starring Peter van Eyck,

O.E. Hasse Otto Eduard Hasse (11 July 1903 – 12 September 1978) was a German film actor and director. Biography Hasse was born to Wilhelm Gustav Eduard Hasse, a blacksmith, and Valeria Hasse in the village of Obersitzko, Province of Posen, Germa ...

and Yvonne Furneaux. It was a co-production between France, Italy and West Germany. The film was the last in a series of films which had revived the Weimar era character Doctor Mabuse. The film's sets were designed by the

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

Ernst H. Albrecht Ernst H. Albrecht (1906–1982) was a German art director. He worked on the sets of over eighty films during his career. He was employed mainly in Germany, but also worked on the Austrian film ''The Blue Star of the South'' in 1951.Fritsche p.241 ...

and

Wilhelm Vorwerg Wilhelm Vorwerg (1899–1990) was a German art director who designed the sets for over fifty films including a number of Rialto Film's series of Edgar Wallace adaptations in the 1960s.Bergfelder p.256 Selected filmography * '' In the Name of the ...

. It was shot at the Spandau Studios in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Plot

British Secret Service agent Major Anders investigates Professor Larsen who has invented a

death ray The death ray or death beam was a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon first theorized around the 1920s and 1930s. Around that time, notable inventors such as Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scot ...

on his island. Included among the parties trying to obtain it is the arch criminal

Dr. Mabuse Dr. Mabuse is a fictional character created by Norbert Jacques in his 1921 novel ('Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler'), and his 1932 follow-up novel ''Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse'' (1932). The character was made famous by three films about the character ...

. Anders leads an army of frogmen to stop Larsen and Mabuse.

Cast

* Peter van Eyck as Maj. Bob Anders *

as Prof. Larsen * Yvonne Furneaux as Gilda Larsen *

Rika Dialina Rika Dialina ( el, Ειρήνη (Ρίκα) Διαλυνά; born August 8, 1934) is a Greek actress and beauty queen. She represented Greece at the Miss Universe 1954 pageant in Long Beach, California. Diallina, along with Miss Korea, Pu Rak Hi, w ...

as Judy * Wolfgang Preiss as Dr. Mabuse's ghost * Walter Rilla as Prof. Pohland *

Ernst Schroder Ernst is both a surname and a given name, the German, Dutch, and Scandinavian form of Ernest. Notable people with the name include: Surname * Adolf Ernst (1832–1899) German botanist known by the author abbreviation "Ernst" * Anton Ernst (1975- ...

as Chefarzt * Robert Beatty as Col. Matson *

Valéry Inkijinoff Valery Ivanovich Inkizhinov (russian: Валерий Иванович Инкижинов; 25 March 1895 – 26 September 1973), known as Valéry Inkijinoff, was a Russian actor, director and acting teacher. Born to a Buryat family in Irkutsk, h ...

as Dr. Krishna *

Dieter Eppler Dieter Eppler (11 February 1927, in Stuttgart – 12 April 2008, in Stuttgart) was a German television actor and director of radio drama Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purel ...

as Kaspar *

Claudio Gora Claudio Gora, '' Emilio Giordana '' (27 July 1913 – 13 March 1998) was an Italian actor and film director. He was particularly prolific, making some 155 appearances in film and television over nearly 60 years (from 1939 to 1997). In the 1950s ...

as Direktor Botani alias "Dr. Mabuse" * Gustavo Rojo as Mario Monta * Massimo Pietrobon as Jason Monta * Charles Fawcett as Cmdr. Adams * Leo Genn as Adm. Quency * Yoko Tani as Mercedes

Release

''The Secret of Dr. Mabuse'' was released in West Germany on 18 September 1964.

Reception

Creature Feature gave the movie two stars, calling it dreary.Stanely, J. (2000) Creature Feature: 3rd Edition

References

Bibliography

* Haase, Holger: The Many Masks of Dr. Mabuse: Mabuse in the 1960s. (Kindle 2020) *Reimer, Robert C. & Reimer, Carol J. ''The A to Z of German Cinema''. Scarecrow Press, 2010.

External links

* 1964 films 1960s crime thriller films 1960s science fiction films 1960s spy thriller films Dr. Mabuse films Films directed by Hugo Fregonese Films set in London Films set in Malta 1960s German-language films French black-and-white films French sequel films German black-and-white films German science fiction films German sequel films German spy thriller films German crime thriller films West German films Italian black-and-white films Italian sequel films Films shot at Spandau Studios 1960s German films {{1960s-sf-film-stub