I saw The Thousand and One Lives of Doctor Mabuse...

Dr. Mabuse is a villain cut from the same conquering cloth as Svengali, Blofeld and Fu Manchu. "The Thousand and One Lives of Doctor Mabuse" (rendered by the prestigious Hollinsworth Productions) marks this fiend's mesmerizing re-entry, thanks to director/writer Ansel "Loon Lake" Faraj, who also revives German expressionism in a manner that's nothing short of staggering. 

For his black-and-white, sequel short (the third chapter, no less, in his extraordinary, revivalist series), Faraj again gives us the empathetic and identifiable actor, Nathan Wilson, who portrays the hypnotist's anguished adversary (and reluctant successor), Inspector Carl Lohemann. 

Also returning is Jerry Lacy as the saga's eponymous mind-controller. (Lacy is beloved by "Dark Shadows" fans for his portrayal of Reverend Gregory Trask and to comedy buffs, as Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen's "Play it Again, Sam").  

For his Mabuse persona, Lacy implements the ideal command to return poor Lohemann to the scattered edge. Lohemann, therefore, becomes hopelessly hounded by the madman he's seemingly murdered. But is Mabuse's resurrection genuine or a figment of the inspector's scrambled subconscious? (There was, after all, a wild mind transferal in the first of Faraj's Mubuse films, which led down a demented, "Metropolis" trail in the second, but that was then, and this is a whole new, inner hell.)

To abet the strangeness, Lohemann's old colleague, Inspector Norbert Von Wenk visits per reverie. (Von Wenk is represented by the revered Linden Chiles, who passed away in 2013, after the first film wrapped, but via movie magic, flawlessly impacts the plot.) Though Von Wenk supplies a chewy tidbit, Lohemann realizes that when it comes to the manipulating Mabuse, remedies are never easy, let alone ever tangible. (The tale's cerebral paths prove this in a thousand and one chilling ways.)

To his credit, Faraj musters amazing Fritz Lang flair (with traces of Edgar Wallace, Herk Harvey and Dario Agento) to augment the conundrum: an apt approach since the great, German director ushered Norbert Jacques' famous character onto celluloid in 1922 and two times thereafter. Thanks to Faraj's unnerving nuances and phantasmic photography, one will become absorbed by a complex and paranoid dimension in league with the past, but unlike any other in Mabuse history. (In addition, Bill Wandel's menacing score reinforces the story's surrealistic style, enhancing the Germanic mood and pace.)

Without question, Faraj must be applauded for delivering Mabuse to our doleful, pandemic age: so apt for such a clinging criminal. The allegorical move makes the movie a hip and haunting homage, which fans of the surreptitious malefactor (as well as cinematic connoisseurs of every kind) are assured to praise.  

One can view "The Thousand and One Lives of Doctor Mabuse" at 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3SNXH3wWSA&feature=youtu.be.