This film from the prolific movie producer Lew Grade was made in 1978 and features a stellar cast including Sir Lawrence Olivier, Gregory Peck and a very young Steve Guttenberg.

Sir Lawrence plays an elderly Nazi hunter operating out of Austria who is contacted by a young man who believes he has stumbled on a plot by escaped Nazis living in South America to resurrect the Third Reich. The Nazi plot, led by the war criminal Joseph Mengele, played by Gregory Peck, is partially uncovered by Barry Kohler played by Steve Guttenberg, who attempts to interest the Nazi hunter, Ezra Lieberman in his information but, at first at least, the overworked and underfunded Lieberman refuses to believe Kohler’s tale.

In an effort to get substantiation for his story, Kohler bugs Mengele’s apartment and attempts to get the information to Lieberman, but is rumbled when he uses a frequency in the 88-108MHz band that is discovered*. Not to give too much of the plot away, Lieberman becomes interested in Kohler’s data and using it stumbles upon an appalling plan to recreate a new worldwide Nazi regime.

There are some interesting side characters that bring in political and social issues that were pertinent to the time. One of these is the member of a group called the ‘Young Jewish Defenders’ which is a parody of the Jewish Defence League that was started in the 1960’s by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. At the time this film was made there was much media speculation about what happened to those Nazis who had escaped justice at Nuremburg, and it was public knowledge that many of them had been given assistance by pro-Nazi military regimes in South America. Many Nazi war criminals also melted into the significant German communities that existed in South America at this time.

Although completely a-historical, this movie is a cracking action drama that will keep you watching until the end.

I apologise for the delay in putting up this week’s Friday Night Movie but I’ve been incredibly busy lately both with some investigative journalism and with other non blog related things.

<

>

* the lesson of this is if you are bugging bad guys and using unencrypted transmissions then never ever use a frequency that can be picked up on a domestic radio receiver.