Mistery of Fear 1944 Fritz Lang

Condominium residents are terrified when they learn that two of their neighbors have been brutally raped and that the culprit may be living in their midst. A police manhunt ensues. One officer, who actually lives in the complex, is particularly troubled, for not only do the incidents cause his wife to admit that she was a victim of date rape, he is also the one who had a chance to kill the rapist and didn't.

A neglectful mother overhears her husband on the telephone at their workplace talking with their babysitter. She discovers they are having an affair and are going to have a baby. She concocts an evil plan to win back her husband and remove the girl and baby. Two men are hired to kill the girl and hold the son hostage in order for her to play the hero and reclaim her husband. The plan hits a snag when the criminals enter the wrong apartment.

This superbly produced four-disc set in Eureka's Master of Cinema series features his three very different takes on Mabuse: the five-hour Dr Mabuse, The Gambler (1922), one of the masterpieces of silent cinema which captured the malaise of the Weimar Republic; The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933), which targeted the ascendancy of Nazism and was his last German film before going into exile; and The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960), his final movie, reflecting his thoughts on the new Germany and the cold war.

Kino Classics' three DVD set Fritz Lang: The Early Works collects some of the earliest, rarest efforts from the director of such provocative classics as Metropolis (1926), M (1931) and Fury (1936). Probably the most surprising thing about the trio of restored 1919-21 German silents assembled here is that they have very little of the austere, carefully composed visual style that Lang would later be well-known for.

In Fritz Langs startling and exquisite film M, fear stalks the streets of Berlin in the form of a serial child murderer whose grisly accomplishments are so heinous even the criminal minds of the underworld want him dead. Filmed in post-Weimar Germany during the infancy of the Nazi state, this tale of moral depravity serves not just as an allegory for the need of justice for all, but as an ominous foreshadowing of the sort of societal hysteria that leads to cultural witch hunts. Originally titled "Mörder Unter Uns" ("Murder Among Us"), M was one of Peter Lorre's (CASABLANCA) first major film roles.

Un asesino de niñas tiene atemorizada a toda la ciudad. Mientras la policía sigue su frenética y desesperada búsqueda, deteniendo a cualquier persona mínimamente sospechosa, los líderes del hampa, encendidos por las redadas contra ellos, deciden encontrar al asesino ellos mismos. (FILMAFFINITY)