Review: THE ENFORCER (1951) HUMPHREY BOGART AND THE RETURN OF DR. M.

As Holger would say, once you’ve spotted the pattern, you’re going to see Dr. Mabuse everywhere.

So what is the Mabuse pattern? Seemingly unrelated crimes gradually reveal a network of criminals directed by a hidden mastermind. His voice carries the orders, technology keeps him out of sight, and his will holds the whole thing together. Add mind control, asylums and the complete submission of other people’s wills, and you know the territory.

Well, how about THE ENFORCER (1951)?

Honestly, I was just relaxing in my man-cave cinema after finishing MYTHOS MABUSE, looking to waste a little time with whatever film happened to come my way. Prime had nothing that interested me or that I hadn’t already seen. Netflix? Same problem.

Browsing through my trusty NAS, I stumbled upon my neglected FILM NOIR folder and felt slightly guilty about having ignored those 200-plus films for so long. My first choice turned out to be an FBI publicity exercise of the worst kind. After twenty minutes, I switched it off and simply picked the next film on the list: THE ENFORCER.

Oh, Humphrey Bogart. Warner Bros. Can’t be that bad, can it?

The story unfolds nicely. Bogart plays Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson, who has finally brought master criminal Albert Mendoza into custody. Mendoza is awaiting trial. Ferguson has one crucial witness, Joe Rico, scheduled to testify the following morning, and is keeping him close.

Rico is scared shitless.

He doesn’t merely fear that Mendoza will have him killed. He seems convinced that the man is beyond ordinary human limitations: “He’ll never die.” And, more explicitly: “He ain’t human.” See: not Bogart is the ENFORCER here: it is Mendoza - and what better title to give to someone like Doctor Mabuse?

Sound familiar?

Rico tries to escape through a window. Ferguson attempts to save him, but Rico falls to his death. An accident? Perhaps. But watch his hesitation before accepting Ferguson’s hand—and then watch the hand itself. I’m not convinced we can simply dismiss the possibility that he lets go deliberately. The scene leaves me wondering whether his fear of Mendoza has finally become stronger than his instinct to survive.

Through a series of intricate, layered flashbacks, Bogey now retraces the investigation that brought Mendoza into custody.

You see, Mendoza has this “Organisation”, which he controls through telephone orders and intermediaries. Rico is the link to the man at the top. He was also present when Mendoza personally committed an early murder. Unfortunately for Mendoza, other people witnessed that killing too. They now have to disappear.

As Ferguson follows the Organisation’s trail, he encounters people who are more frightened of their employer than of the police. One kills himself. Another seeks safety in an asylum. Pretending to be insane apparently seems preferable to remaining available for work.

And that last detail brings us to DER CHEMIKER DES DR. MABUSE (which was incorporated into THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE 1962).

There, a scientist seeks refuge in an asylum to prevent Mabuse from obtaining his formula for world destruction. The information is different, but the defensive manoeuvre is remarkably similar: get yourself behind the walls of a psychiatric institution because the world outside belongs to somebody you cannot resist.

An asylum as sanctuary from the master criminal. A rather specific item to find in the same box as remote commands, terrified accomplices and a seemingly inescapable Organisation.

Mendoza doesn’t need hypnosis. His employees do the job for him.

His power has taken up residence in their heads. Even when he is physically absent—or locked in a cell—they anticipate his wishes, imagine his reach and act accordingly. Call it psychological domination rather than literal mind control if you prefer. The practical results are unpleasantly similar.

Eventually, only one crucial eyewitness remains, and the film becomes a race to reach her before Mendoza’s killers do.

But there is another lovely detail: the tape recorder.

Ferguson repeatedly listens to Rico’s recorded testimony. The witness is dead, but his voice keeps speaking. A detail about the surviving witness’s eye colour finally allows Ferguson to recognise a fatal case of mistaken identity. Then he uses a loudspeaker to warn the woman in the street.

Think about that for a moment. Recorded speech preserves the knowledge the Organisation tried to destroy. An amplified voice then intervenes in events at a distance. By the end, Bogey has appropriated the very sort of technological reach that makes the hidden mastermind so formidable.

I could hardly believe it.

I had spent something like two years working on a MABUSE book and the article for KRIMI!, finally sat down to watch something else, picked a film practically at random—and there he was again.

Are you kidding me?

And it wasn’t just the script. Bogey would have made a splendid Wenk. In fact, his position as a prosecuting attorney makes the comparison rather more satisfying than simply casting him as another police inspector. Here is a representative of the law trying to make an apparently untouchable criminal answerable to it, while the criminal’s influence keeps reaching beyond the walls meant to contain him.

The camerawork and overall atmosphere felt comfortably at home in Lang’s world. Honestly, this is far superior to most of the CCC Mabuse films.

What a joy. 

The directing credit belongs to Bretaigne Windust, although Raoul Walsh contributed uncredited work, including the suspenseful finale. We got five days of retakes and additional scenes directed by Walsh. So this is not a case of discovering that Fritz Lang secretly turned up with a megaphone. It is a case of finding a film whose dramatic machinery feels extraordinarily familiar.

All right. Time for some research.

Surely a film this obviously Mabuse-like had some connection to Fritz Lang?

And there it was.

THE ENFORCER was produced by Milton Sperling for United States Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. United States Pictures, founded by Joseph Bernhard and Sperling, had launched with CLOAK AND DAGGER in 1946.

Directed by Fritz Lang. Produced by Milton Sperling.

Their very first production.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Whether the company was established specifically for CLOAK AND DAGGER would require further documentation. But the important point is already there: this was the same producer working through the same production company, just a few years after making a film with Lang.

Warner Bros. also brings us back towards the later Terra/Towers/AIP projects I discuss in connection with the recycling of Mabuse material. The precise distribution arrangements are a separate story, but the name certainly refuses to stay out of this one.

Of course, THE ENFORCER has a real-world foundation: Murder, Inc., the organised business of contract killing. Its production actively cultivated that connection, drawing on people with experience of the criminal world and its prosecution.

But real criminal history and a Mabuse-like narrative are hardly mutually exclusive.

Lang and Thea von Harbou had already drawn on a real espionage scandal for SPIONE: the affair surrounding the Soviet trading organisation ARCOS and the raid on its London premises in 1927. A respectable commercial façade concealing a clandestine network was not something cinema had to invent from scratch.

The interesting question is what filmmakers do with such material. A collection of crimes becomes a system. The system acquires a hidden centre. Orders travel through modern communications, while fear does the work that physical supervision cannot.

That is the pattern I recognised in THE ENFORCER.

The Sperling connection gives us a genuine production link to Lang. It does not, by itself, establish that anybody adapted or borrowed a Mabuse story. But it certainly gives me a reason to look beyond the obvious explanation that I have simply spent too long in the company of the good doctor.

Which, admittedly, I have.

Is there more?

Check out our Dr. Mabuse filmlist on Letterboxd!