‘The Boys from Brazil’

Stars: James Mason, Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck

Rated: R

Released: 1978

What I “know:” Absolutely nothing.

What I know after reading the Netflix sleeve: “In this thriller based on Ira Levin’s novel, young Nazi hunter Barry Kohler stumbles on the trail of the infamous “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele, who is planning to resurrect Hitler’s vision in South America.”

Well, this is a slight change in tone from “Spinal Tap?” Not sure I’m in a good place for such a bad movie (not bad in quality, but bad in evilness), but considering the state of the world right now … maybe?

TRAILER:

OMG I just watched this like 15 minutes into the movie and Jesus, this is a MUCH weirder movie than I have seen so far. (You’ll notice I hadn’t seen it yet below when I was like “wait, Peck is the bad guy?” What is with the doll laughing over the phone? This is weird.

00:56: Is Steven Guttenberg like the Steve Guttenberg? Dude went from this to “Police Academy” movies? I guess I can see it … needed a little levity.

2:38: Uh, it is. Weird. Not sure I’ve ever seen him do serious work. Well, aside from his impeccable presence as Woody Goodman on “Veronica Mars,” but that’s neither here nor there.

11:09: So Steve Guttenberg is the only guy not named Mengele on the Netflix sleeve, and he’s not even listed as one of the stars? Just a co-star? Interesting. Also, he just went down to Paraguay by himself, broke this story, and now magically has the home number of an older Nazi hunter he looks up to?

12:03: Kohler just walks up to a table with the same little kid who helped him earlier, handed him a box, and then led him away … an no one flinched. No one asked questions. He was sitting with other people and they either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

13:16: I am assuming the man dressed all in white who is suddenly bathed in lights, arriving on a small plane, is Dr. Mengele. They didn’t traffic in subtlety with the score to this movie. Blaring music when he was shown for the first time.

15:26: Holy crap, Gregory Peck is the baddie? Peck = Mengele? Weird. This is not the charming Peck I remember from “Roman Holiday.” Also, the baddie underling he’s talking to is the guy from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” which is doubly weird.

17:25: “In the next two and a half years, 94 men must die on or near certain dates.” Wait, what? I thought this was about Nazis. Who is he assassinating? Or why? Civil servants? Like mailmen? WHAT IS GOING ON?

19:05: “And by killing this old mailman, I will be fulfilling the destiny of the Aryan race?” THANK YOU FOR ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS, RANDOM NAZI.

19:46: Ugh, that stupid kid. You can’t start playing the conversation while guards are walking by. Dummy. But I like how while all his henchmen are destroying this room, looking for the bug, he just stands there looking menacing. Do some work, lazybones.

 

21:29: Having now watched the trailer, and knowing that Guttenberg is only listed as a co-star, methinks his whooping in the car for having escaped is slightly premature.

22:12: Peck looks like a meaner Tom Selleck with that mustache. Speaking of Selleck and Guttenberg, can we get a “Three Men and a Grandbaby” made? Please?

25:46: Laurence Olivier getting sassy: “Take your time. Old men do not go back to sleep once they have been awakened.” Sadly, Guttenberg should not take his time as the Nazis are downstairs giving the front desk clerk some coersion to share where he is.

26:48: Poor, dead Guttenberg. Then Mengele is all smiles at the kid, then says “kill him.” Classic movie villain.

30:55: OK, Ezra Lieberman is the best. After his sassy rejoinder above to the soon-to-be-dead Kohler, he meets some guy he knows in the street, asks to speak, and the guy says he’s late for lunch. Lieberman says “Eight times last week I called you, and each time you were at lunch. Perhaps you have a tapeworm.”

35:21: I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure driving into a crate full of bottles while someone pees behind it, then them falling between two other crates, would not actually kill them. Cut them, sure. But I wouldn’t leave just thinking “well, one down, 93 more to go.”

35:56: So he didn’t have the kid killed, he just injected blue dye into his eyes so he’d look … Aryan? Doesn’t make his brown skin go away, good doctor.

36:45: The entire point of the scene of him walking out of his house to go meet the sea plane was to show the topless woman sweeping his front porch, right? Can’t see any other reason.

38:05: Well that’s horrifying.

46:47: So the weird kid with the clarinet has the weird, cloudy blue eyes that Mengele gave that poor native boy who worked for him/spied on him.

47:32: Oh, so this is one of the widows? And her kid looks like one of Mengele’s experiments? So that’s why he wanted this dude killed, but are all his experimental children just randomly living with civil servants? That’s really orchestrated, and would also pretty quickly trace back to him, I’d think. Also, this widow is CRAZY transparent. Her whole “Well, I don’t know if he was a Nazi as I only met him after that, and also, who is this ‘Dr. Mengele’ you’re mentioning?’ thing is weird.

49:32: HAHAHA she is REALLY happy her hubby is dead. He beat the shit out of the kid and she’s like “Thank God he got hit by that car!”

50:32: So creepy Nazi had to sleep with and then kill the blonde just to kill her landlord? That seems unnecessary. I mean, also, the killing of the 94 random people around the world, but whatever.

51:08: There’s the creepy doll with the phone! Is it just like her weird kid with a weird puppet? What is happening??

1:01:06: Man, reconnecting with an old Nazi friend and then tossing him off the top of a damn is pretty hardcore.

1:01:34: Anne Meara! Man! I love her. P.S. How is this movie only halfway done? Eek.

1:02:30: Yeah, another weird blue-eyed freak kid with an attitude at the house of a dead dude. I think it’s the same kid … yep, IMDB says it’s the same actor. And there are two more! Oooh Anne Meara knows something. She just shut down that whole “You look just like this kid in Germany” conversation real fast.

1:04:07: There’s the third. And he’s even feistier than the others! “Don’t you understand English, you ass?”

1:06:13: So all these kids are getting handed out by some evil German woman?

1:10:43: This woman worked for an adoption agency with a four-year window for both the husband and wife to have been born, but they had to be like 20 years apart, with the man older? And they had to be Nordic-Christian? Suddenly the Nazi thing makes sense.

1:13:15: “Thirty years and the world has forgotten.” Uh, no, it hasn’t. People very much remember the Holocaust, you spaz. Also, Ezra’s look of disdain after she said that was golden. “You are not a guard here, madam, you are a PRISONER. I may leave here empty-handed, but you may not go anywhere.”

1:17:57: I would like to think most people didn’t celebrate their second honeymoon at a Nazi gala in the ’70s?

1:18:44: “Shut up, you ugly bitch.” Well if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Dr. Mengele …

1:19:30: Awww poor Mengele’s murderers are being called back home because Ezra is on the trail, or, as Mengele called him, “that infernal Jew.”

1:27:19: Uhhhhh I think I know where this is going now. And it’s not good.

1:33:31: And therrre it is. Mengele is cloning Hitlers. Jesus. Side note, how pissed would you be if you found out you adopted Hitler? Like, man. $500 for a psychopath? No thanks.

1:39:47: “I don’t know about the Nazis. It’s the n*****s we’ve gotta worry about.” Hello, sir, have you heard about the Ku Klux Klan? They’d be interested in talking to you.

1:42:20: I’m not convinced four Doberman’s couldn’t break down a hollow closet door if they’re that trained to protect their master. I feel like they should have broken down the door and eaten Mengele’s throat.

1:43:57: If Mengele kills Ezra, I’ma be mega-pissed.

1:46:27: This is the best/worst fight scene ever captured on film. No doubt. They’re literally just squirming around and biting each other.

1:49:45: Wait, so Ezra took two more gunshots just to let those murderous bastards out so they could bark menacingly?  Come on, Dobies, do better.

1:52:16: So Hitler IV walks in, sees two strange, bloody men in his living room, one surrounded by snarling Dobermans, and instantly starts just taking pictures? Then it takes the old one who ISN’T being threatened by dogs to say “Call the police” and then he says “Yeah.” Not exactly the brightest kid.

1:52:42: “If I prove I know you better than anyone in the whole world, better even than your mother, will you listen to me?” No, that would make you a crazy stalker. Call the police, kiddo.

1:53:58: Oh god, this whole movie was worth it for the belly laugh I just got from Hitler IV listening to Mengele’s whole speech, ending with him being the living duplicate of the greatest man who ever lived, and then the kid saying, “Oh man, you’re weird.”

1:55:30: FINALLY the dogs eat his face. Thank god. That was some good tension.

1:58:33: Yay, Ezra’s awake!

2:01:19: Ezra Lieberman is a boss. Good on him for believing in people, despite everything he’s seen.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate symbolism, so I have no clue what the whole shark-tooth bracelet means, and I don’t really care. I wouldn’t say this movie was “enjoyable” as that would kind of make me a psychopath. It felt slow-moving through the first 90 minutes, but then I understood why. You can’t just give that away at the beginning. Also, this is the second Peck movie I’ve seen, two very different movies, and I’ve really enjoyed (and believed) him in both. He might have been OK at that acting thing. Overall, not the sunniest movie I’ve seen, but very interesting and climactic.

Next up: “Foul Play!”