The Vengeance of Doctor Mabuse - Kino Cult #34

Exploitation. Schlock. Cult films. There’s no rhyme or reason as to whether or not one of these movies will click with you. I know folks who absolutely adore Jess Franco. Andrea Canales, a programmer for the Majestic out of Phoenix and a good friend of mine, can’t get enough of his stuff. I feel like whenever I watch one of his movies, I’m so overcome with boredom that I’m transported back in time: I’m five years old, I want to watch cartoons on TV, but my dad is watching golf, and I’m so bored that I want to cry. Even a movie that sounds like it should be “so good it’s bad” just winds up being… well, just bad. Oasis of the Zombies, a movie about Nazis, treasure hunting, and zombies, can’t even manage to be entertaining on a sub-ironic level.

But who am I to judge? Most exploitation movies of that era are about twenty minutes of excitement, packaged in an 80-minute movie, with nothing but padding to fill the runtime. One of my favorite exploitation flicks, Joe D’amato’s Anthropophagus, is excruciatingly dull outside of its handful of grisly, over-the-top killings. Most of the film is just people walking around. D’Amato doesn’t even bother trying to make these scenes tense. Whether you’re watching Anthropophagus or The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse, it’s either going to click or it’s not.

Jess Franco’s The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse is an unofficial entry into the established Dr. Mabuse film franchise, and it takes careful steps never to say his name. Even the original, non-English title refers to him as “Dr. M”. Instead, this is more of a love letter from Franco to Fritz Lang, who adapted the character to the screen in the 1920s. It takes the character and moves him into a more modern and sleazier 1970s setting with all the violence and nudity that Franco is known for—even if this entry is a little tame when it comes to those elements.

The end result is a mixed bag. It tries a lot of things and throws about a dozen genres at the audience, with an assortment of tones to go along with them. It’s a spy movie with a Frankenstein’s Monster-esque henchman. It’s a family-friendly, quasi-comedic action/adventure… with some random nudity thrown in for good measure. Instead of meshing together and creating a rich tapestry of influences, from Lang’s original German Expressionistic vision, with a Euro-sleaze exploitation flavor, it winds up a messy, boring, incomprehensible story. It takes about 45 minutes out of an 80-minute runtime to even clarify what the plot is even about. And even then, I’m not entirely sure I understand it, or if it even matters. Kidnapping. Stripteases. Mind control. Moon rocks. Data theft for the blueprints of a powerful weapon. All of this and more, plus a small-town sheriff who, along with the rest of the cast, exclusively speaks German!

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Kino Cult brings the madness, power, and evil of The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse to Blu-ray in a single-disc release, housed in a standard case with a removable slipcover. The case and the slip both contain classic poster artwork, a painted depiction of the doctor’s monstrous henchman restraining a kidnapped woman. 

Gosh, how to score the video quality of a movie like The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse? On the one hand, it looks like butt, with scratches across the presentation and colors so washed out they look like they’ve sat in the direct sunlight for years. On the other hand, do you really need your exploitation cinema to look like a crisp, million-dollar bill? Presented here in 1080p HD, The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse looks about as good as it should. Details are surprisingly sharp when a shot is actually in focus, and any technical issue with the film’s video transfer is clearly the result of the filming method used and not with the folks over at Kino. There’s only so much you can do when a shot is underlit and out of focus. They’re good, but they’re not THAT good.

For all my complaining about The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse, the DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono audio option couldn’t be better. Likely because it was all dubbed in post, but dialogue clarity shines without any issues—no hissing static, no popping. And the one genuinely great thing that The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse has going for it is its jazzy score, courtesy of Jess Franco himself and Rolf Kühn. Throughout the mix, there were never any issues with leveling. No effects were blaringly louder than others. So, kudos to the sound guys. You did great!

The one, sole feature for The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse is an audio commentary from film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson. The movie is so dull that Howarth and Thompson spend most of the time talking about its connection to other movies.: Jess Franco previously worked with so-and-so on this, who worked on blah-blah-blah, with what’s-his-face.

• Audio Commentary – Film Historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson

There’s nothing better than a good exploitation movie. But god help you, there’s nothing worse than a bad one. I can forgive a lot as long as a movie fulfills the overall promise of being entertaining. To be poorly made, badly acted, terribly lensed, and not even have the decency to be stupidly entertaining is a crime against cinema. Then again, who the hell am I, but a lowly movie-review guy. Jess Franco has his fans, and I’m sure they’d eat this up in a second. Students of exploitation film as a whole would find the commentary track alone worth the purchase of the disc. The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse is Worth a Look for Franco fans and cult connoisseurs.