YMMV / Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

• Adaptation Displacement: The film series is far better remembered today than Jacques' novels.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Mabuse himself is a ruthless master criminal. When the local prosecutor gets too close to him, Mabuse tries to have him killed, and cares little when his lover and right-hand woman Carozza is captured. Playing on her feelings for him, Mabuse has her kill herself and even has the prosecutor's office bombed, having the loyal subordinate who did so shot as not to betray any of the doctor's secrets. Mabuse frequently eliminates those in his path, and when he takes a shine to a countess, he locks her up and manipulates her husband into suicide, with no care for the misery he leaves in his wake as he builds up his great empire of crime.
• Creepy Awesome: Mabuse is a revolting crime lord and possible spirit on a mission to inflict as much suffering as possible but he's played to such hammy perfection one can't help but have fun watching him.
• Love to Hate: The spirits of Mabuse's victims piling on him and driving him to insanity is a wonderfully cathartic moment but it works in to the completion of his villainous tenure following the build up of his schemes and wicked manipulations.
• Narm: At the start of the second part of the movie, drunk Mabuse screams:
  Only now shall the world learn who I am — I! Mabuse! A giant — a titan who jumbles up laws and gods like withered leaves!

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