Review of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) by Greg W — 23 Sep 2013

Honestly, the best response I can offer to this film is the classic Internet line "What is this I don't even." It's an early sound film from the German master filmmaker Fritz Lang, and as weird as his classics M and Metropolis are, this film is definitely weirder.

The overstuffed, confusing plot involves a psychic criminal mastermind who commands an "empire of crime" from within his cell in the mental asylum and is able to possess other people and, later, appear as a ghost.

There's also a lot of shooting, and a factory burning down, and a room flooding with water, and a bomb that takes three hours to go off for some reason. It's possibly the weirdest film I've seen from the 1930s.

I don't really know what else to say about it.