Episode 155 - On The Nazi Conspiracy Thriller

Reel Politik Podcast

In another instalment in what seems to be developing into a kind of loose series on the far-right on film, Yair and Jack look at two touchstone pictures in the 1970s Nazi conspiracy thriller subgenre: 1974's The Odessa File and 1978's The Boys From Brazil. Neither are among the best conspiracy thrillers from that decade - probably not even Nazi ones, as Marathon Man (1976) takes that crown - but they're a lot better than subsequent attempts to bring some Nazisploitation to the cinema. Savouring ridiculous performances by Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and Jon Voight, we look back on a time when the twisted likes of Josef Mengele still roamed the earth, Simon Wiesenthal was still travelling far and wide to catch them, and the spectre of fascism was working its way into the decade's paranoid cinema. Produced by tom disso.