Following The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and The Return of Dr. Mabuse, Gert Fröbe’s Inspector Lohmann is nowhere to be found, presumably off to grab a hoagie or four. Also nowhere to be found: Dr. Mabuse! Well, if he can get his German grabbers on the invisibility machine invented by the aptly named Professor Erasmus (Rudolf Fernau, The Mad Executioners), that is.

Whereas Mabuse (the returning Wolfgang Preiss) desires the doohickey for his usual world-domination agenda, the academic utilizes it to spy on the stage actress he’s obsessed with (Karin Dor, The Bellboy and the Playgirls) incognito. This gives us several amusing shots of hovering binoculars from a box seat at the opera … although he could just walk onstage, being unseeable and all.

The third film of producer Artur Brauner’s six-flicks revival of the German supervillain, The Invisible Dr. Mabuse largely plays out at the trapdoor-laden theater, where returning FBI agent Joe Como (Lex Barker) joins commissioner (Siegfried Lowitz, The Sinister Monk) investigates a poison-gas murder committed by Bobo the Clown (Werner Peters, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and eventually learns of Mabuse’s dastardly scheme, aka Operation X.

And X marks the entertainment. From multiple drops of a guillotine to someone’s face melting like Velveeta, director Harald Reinl (Chariots of the Gods) throws a ton at the screen. Lucidity may not result, but the pulp-science antics make for a fun break in the series — something of a one-off. —Rod Lott

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As played by Christopher Walken in the film Communion, with nary a Jesus cracker in sight, Whitley Strieber tries to write the Great American Novel. Because Strieber is a real-life author of The Wolfen and The Hunger, we know he won’t. But he does write the book Communion, the work of nonfiction — 😉 😉 — that ultimately will take his career to the stars.

Why? The answer’s in the butt, Bob. No Walken film is more Walken, for reasons that shall become apparent.

At a post-Christmas weekend visit to the family cabin from their NYC apartment, Whitley endures a sweaty nightmare of being visited by gray-skinned, big-eyed aliens from outer space. After returning home, his wife (Lindsay Crouse, The Arrival) notices he’s just not himself anymore — and for good reason, which surfaces under hypnosis by Misery’s Frances Sternhagen: That was no dream. And following that logic, that means the anal probe … gulp!

This causes a fissure in his rectum marriage, which may be for the best, considering the missus has a fashion sense I’d dub “Annie Hall meets Carmen Sandiego.”

The first glimpse we’re afforded of the alien is merely partial — and wholly terrifying. This bodes well for Communion. But as Whitley’s obsessions and breakdowns increasingly unhinge him from reality, Walken goes full Walken, and so does the movie! From the director’s chair, Philippe Mora (Howling II and III) approaches lucidity more liberally than his star tackles diction.

I don’t quite know how to convey the odd-as-a-$3-bill nature of Whitley’s experiences on the aliens’ ship. He parties with them in a pilgrim hat. They hang in a steam room. He high-fives an E.T. and then dances. I realize these sound like scenes from a stoner comedy where Seth Rogen might blow aliens’ minds with bong-hit lessons and, in exchange, they infuse his with, like, algebra and shit.

Seriously, these too-close encounters of the WTF kind feel as though Mora and Strieber (who adapted his own bestseller for the screenplay) are just fucking with us to see if we’re willing to swallow. I am not.

In fact, I’d steal Whitley’s ominous threat to public transit riders — “Let me tell you, you folks are in for a big surprise, one very big surprise” — and throw it right back at this maladroit movie, aiming to knock that goddamn pilgrim hat into a galaxy far, far away. That’s more action than the third section gives, and still no Jesus crackers. —Rod Lott

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