The supposedly dead and buried Mabuse returns to his criminal activities, as his longtime foe Police Inspector Lohmann, a dauntless girl reporter, and an American – who may be an FBI agent, or maybe a Chicago mobster – investigate a series of gruesome murders connected to a maximum security prison and involving a minister who has written a book called “The Anatomy Of The Devil”.

The final installment in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy (following TICKET OF NO RETURN and FREAK ORLANDO) casts Delphine Seyrig as the nefarious Fritz Lang supervillain Dr. Mabuse, here the head of a powerful media empire that seeks to create headlines by manufacturing (and then publicly destroying) its own celebrity: the wealthy, handsome playboy Dorian Gray.