Although it initially received a mixed reception, critics would later review the film favorably, and it has influenced filmmakers Claude Chabrol and Artur Brauner.

Chased by a bunch of criminals, disgraced former police detective Hofmeister seeks refuge in a noisy print shop.

Professor Baum introduces the case of Dr. Mabuse, the criminal mastermind and hypnotist who ten years earlier went mad.

A clue scratched in a glass window pane at Hofmeister's crime scene causes Lohmann to suspect Mabuse.

During the same night, a hidden figure confers with sections of his organisation, preparing various crimes such as an attack on a chemical plant, robbing a bank, counterfeiting, poisoning water and destroying harvests.

One of the gang members, Thomas Kent, is conflicted between his criminal work, which he needs to do for money, and his affection for a young woman named Lilli.

After several escape attempts have failed, they flood the place to lessen the impact of the explosion and break free when the time bomb goes off.

As Bredow testifies that they assassinated Dr. Kramm in the vicinity of the asylum, Lohmann arranges a confrontation between the gangsters and the Professor, which proves inconclusive.

Lohmann and Kent visit the asylum, where they discover that Baum is the mastermind and has planned an attack on a chemical plant that night.

Cast notes: Norbert Jacques wrote the original Dr. Mabuse books in the style of other popular thrillers in Europe at the time, such as Nick Carter, Fantomas, and Fu Manchu.

In the novel, a character named Frau Kristine obtains a copy of Mabuse's testament which outlines plans for a future world of terrorism and crime that she uses.

Pohl acted in Lang's Woman in the Moon and in an uncredited role in M.[5] Theodor Loos, who portrays Dr. Kramm, had earlier appeared in both Metropolis (as Josaphat) and M (as Inspector Groeber).

Producer Seymour Nebenzal felt that creating this alternative version would enhance international sales for The Testament of Dr.

[12] The French version, titled Le Testament du docteur Mabuse, was edited by Lothar Wolff in France while the film was still in production.

Lang was known for making very long films and to suit foreign fashions, editor Lothar Wolff was contracted to shorten the French-language version.

[12] The film was scheduled for release on March 24, 1933, at the UFA-Palast am Zoo, the same theater that hosted the original premiere of Dr. Mabuse the Gambler in 1922.

Adolf Hitler came to power at the end of January 1933, and on March 14 he established the new Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels.

[5] Goebbels hosted a meeting at his home between himself, Lang and several other German filmmakers on discussions on what films would be permitted by Nazi censorship.

Goebbels' diary makes no mention of such a meeting and Lang's passport also shows that he did not leave until June and made repeated trips between France and Germany throughout 1933.

[19] In 1973, the unedited German version of the film was released in the United States with the title The Testament of Dr. Mabuse with English subtitles.

[5] Lang wrote a "Screen Forward" for the American release: The film was made as an allegory to show Hitler's processes of terrorism.

[18]German cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer, in his book From Caligari to Hitler (1947), commented that Lang's comment "smacks of hindsight", but his own analysis of the film indicates that it "foreshadows Nazi practices", and retroactively reveals Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Lang's first Mabuse film, to be "one of those deep-rooted premonitions which spread over the German post[-World War I] screen".

It is a hallucinating and horrifying story, depicted with great power and the extraordinary beauty of photography that Lang has led his admirers to expect.

"[21] At the Hungarian premiere of the German-language print in 1933, Variety wrote that the film "...certainly shows the influence of American mystery pictures.

"[24] Some years later, Siegfried Kracauer, writing in From Caligari to Hitler, accuses the film of "repetitious shock effects [which] tend to neutralize each other, [resulting in] monotony rather than an increase in suspense."

This anti-Nazi film betrays the power of Nazi spirit over minds insufficiently equipped to counter its peculiar fascination.

Channel 4 gave the film a four stars out of five rating, describing the film as a "sensational crime drama" and "some of the dialogue is clunky, much of the acting...is alien to modern audiences...The final sequence involving the destruction of a huge chemical works and a car chase through eerily lit woods, round hairpin bends and over a closing level crossing is one of the triumphs of early cinema.

[26] Critic Leonard Maltin gave the film three and a half stars out of four and compared it to Dr. Mabuse The Gambler stating that it is "less stylized but no less entertaining".

"[28] After the film's initial release, producer Seymour Nebenzal used scenes from the car chase in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse for his own production of Le roi des Champs-Élysées (1934) featuring Buster Keaton.

Throughout the film, the character recites monologues promoting chaos and disorder which borrow heavily from Mabuse's own in 1933's The Testament of Dr.