Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) is a young man looking for Nazis. In Paraguay, he discovers that there is going to be a meeting of some known Nazi war criminals at an estate. Among the attendees is Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck). Mengele was a Nazi doctor who did unethical experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. Barry bribes a boy working there to place a hidden microphone. Listening in he hears about a plan in which 94 men are to be assassinated. The men are all older low level civil servants. They live in various countries all over the world. Assassins are to be sent out to kill them.
Barry tries to talk to the famous Nazi hunter, Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) about the plot but is killed before he can. Information that Barry sent before he was killed reaches Ezra. Reviewing it with his sister, Esther (Lili Palmer), he realizes that Barry was on to something. Picking up the gauntlet, Ezra tries to get help from Sidney Beynon (Denholm Elliott), who works for Reuters News Agency. He asks for clippings of all deaths of civil servant men aged 65 who died accidentally.
As Ezra researches the deaths, he discovers a pattern. A group of the men all had wives who were twenty years younger. The husbands were abusive. They also had adopted sons that were the same age. The boys were pale with dark hair and blue eyes. They also had similar personalities and the mothers doted on the sons. After talking to genetics expert, Professor Bruckner (Bruno Ganz), Ezra comes to realize that Mengele has cloned 94 babies from the DNA of Adolph Hitler in the hopes that he can create another Hitler and plans on creating a Fourth Reich. In order to facilitate the circumstances that created Hitler, the fathers of the clones must die at a certain time. At the age when Hitler’s father died.
When the faction that financed the operation realizes that Lieberman knows about the plan, they decide to scrub it. Mengele is furious and refuses to back down. He is determined to continue with the experiment.
“The Boys From Brazil” was released in 1978 and was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It is a British American science fiction thriller and was based on the 1976 novel by Ira Levin. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. It was also nominated for six Saturn awards. Filming was done in Portugal, London, Vienna, Austria and Lancaster Pennsylvania.
Although a bit of a stretch, the movie is still rather engrossing and the two hours plus film goes by a lot faster than I expected it to. It has some well-known stars in both big roles as well as small. Among those with tiny roles are a very young Steve Guttenberg, Denholm Elliott, John Dehner, Anne Meara and Michael Gough. Performances are a little spotty at times, but the subject of the film makes it suspenseful and even creepy at times. The ultimate result is an actual conspiracy theory on film.
Laurence Olivier’s character, Ezra Lieberman is based on the real Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal.