Dr. M schlägt zu (1972) Directed by Jesus Franco

(Review originally written at 5 March 2008)

Jesus Franco's take on the Dr. Mabuse franchise...well that should sum up pretty much how this movie is like. Jesus Franco is a director who has always distinguished himself by delivering extremely bad and poor movies. He's always fascinated with putting a lot of nudity and explicit sexuality into his movies. He began early in his career by making mostly bad horror flicks in the '60's and '70's but his career has now reached a point that he's stuck to mostly soft-erotic movies. In many ways his career parallels that of Ed Wood's, also not in the least because of the comparable qualities of their movies. Who ever gave him the green light to do a Dr. Mabuse movie? Fritz Lang is turning over in his grave.

As you would expect, this movie has actually very little to do with the previous Dr. Mabuse movies. It features an extremely muddled story with all kind of oddness's over it and you just simply don't bother to try and understand what the story is all about. It's some extremely bad and disjointed storytelling within this movie. Often the scenes and different characters and plot lines just don't blend in with each other.

The characters (Really, a couple of cowboy cops?) and dialogs are often just horrible and simply laughable. And yes, of course the movie also features a couple of lesbian actions. A thing Jesus Franco also really seems obsessed with. The nudity and sexual content within this movie just seems terribly out of place and makes this more a 'dirty movie' than a real serious attempt by Franco. Not that I expected this in advance though.

Like a typical Franco flick, it's also a real cheap looking movie, with bad locations, laughable make-up effects (what was that monster creature all about?) and shot sequences without the use of any additional lighting, or anything of that sort. On top of that, Jesus Franco also felt to urge to compose the music for this movie. What an horrible, horrible choice that was.

Seriously only watchable for the fans of Franco-trash.

2/10