Eureka's Masters of Cinema series will release an exciting box set on October 19th - The Complete Fritz Lang/Dr Mabuse films! For Mabuse fans in the US with multi-region players (set is PAL format), this means a long-awaited restored print of Lang's 1960 cult classic The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. Set details are as follows:
From the early stages of his career across five decades to his final film, Fritz Lang built a trilogy of paranoiac thrillers focused on an entity who began as a criminal mastermind, and progressed into something more amorphous: fear itself, embodied only by a name – Dr. Mabuse.
For the first time on home video, all three of Fritz Lang's Mabuse films have been collected for one package, in their complete and restored forms.
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. [Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler.] (1922)
Lang's two-part, nearly 5-hour silent epic detailing the rise and fall of Dr. Mabuse in Weimar-era Berlin.
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] (1933)
A tour-de-force thriller rife with supernatural elements, all converging around an attempt by the now-institutionalised Mabuse (or someone acting under his name... and possibly his will) to organise an "Empire of Crime".
Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse [The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse] (1960)
Fritz Lang's final film, in which hypnosis, clairvoyance, surveillance, and machine-guns come together for a whiplash climax that answers the question: Who's channelling Mabuse's methods in the Cold War era?
The Complete Fritz Lang Mabuse will be released as a special 4-disc DVD box set on 19th October 2009 by Eureka as part of the Masters of Cinema series at the RRP of £49.99. Special features will include:
- Original German language intertitles for Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler., along with newly translated English subtitles for each film;
- Newly recorded feature length commentaries on all three films by film scholar and Fritz Lang expert David Kalat;
- Three video featurettes totalling 90 minutes in length on:
- The score of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.;
- The creation of Norbert Jacques' 'Mabuse' character;
- The motifs running throughout the works.
- 2002 video interview with Wolfgang Preiss, the star of Die 100 Augen des Dr. Mabuse;
- An alternative ending to Die 100 Augen des Dr. Mabuse taken from the French print of the film;
- Optional English language dub track for Die 100 Augen des Dr. Mabuse;
- Three lengthy booklets containing a new translation of Fritz Lang's 1924 lecture on 'Sensation Culture', an essay by critic David Cairns, extracts from period interviews with Fritz Lang, an abundance of production stills, illustrations and marketing collateral, and more!