The Boys from Brazil (1978) on Netflix
Barry Kohler, a young amateur Nazi hunter, spies on the fugitive Kameraden in Paraguay, where Mengele orders the killings of civil servants abroad. He telephones Ezra Lieberman in Vienna.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.0/1034,343 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Paraguay, members of the fugitive Nazi network Kameraden meet, and Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor, gives orders for the deaths of civil servants in North America and Western Europe, men in their sixties, on dates he chooses. A young amateur Nazi hunter, Barry Kohler, telephones Ezra Lieberman, a famous and penniless Nazi hunter in Vienna, to tell him of it. Lieberman, his sister Esther, the journalist Sidney Beynon and the vigilante David Bennett then look into the sudden deaths of men who fit the description.
Cast
- Jeremy Blackas Jack Curry / Simon Harrington / Erich Doring / Bobby Wheelock
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Laurence Olivier had recently been ill and was taking as many well-paying movie jobs as he could to provide for his wife and children after his death; Gregory Peck agreed to portray Mengele only because he wanted to work with Olivier, and Lilli Palmer accepted a small role for the same reason.
- The altercation between Lieberman and Mengele took about three or four days to film because of Olivier's ailing health, and Peck recalled that he and Olivier "were lying around on the floor" laughing at the absurdity of staging such a fight at their advanced ages.
SPOILER
Lew Grade, who partly financed the film, felt the ending was too gory and says he protested, but Franklin J. Schaffner, who had final cut rights, overruled him.- The film had 25 minutes cut when it was released in West Germany, in cinemas and in all subsequent TV, video and some DVD releases; uncut versions came only in 1999 from Artisan Entertainment in the United States and in 2009 from Lionsgate in Germany.
- Although the bulk of the film is set in South America, filming on that continent was called "logistically impossible", so it was shot in Lisbon, Portugal, with additional filming in London, Vienna, the Kölnbrein Dam in Austria and Lancaster, Pennsylvania; London stood in for Massachusetts.
