The Boys from Brazil

The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 science fiction thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It stars Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, and features James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Anne Meara, Denholm Elliott, and Steve Guttenberg in supporting roles. The film is a British-American co-production, based on the 1976 novel of the same title by Ira Levin. It was nominated for three Academy Awards. Plot Barry Kohler, a young amateur Nazi hunter, spies on a meeting of the fugitive Nazi organisation Kameraden in Paraguay. At this meeting Josef Mengele, the infamous Auschwitz doctor, issues instructions for the assassinations of 94 civil servants in Northern Europe and North America, all of them low-ranking and aged around 65, on particular dates over the next two years. Kohler telephones Ezra Lieberman, a famous (but penniless and cynical) Nazi hunter living in Vienna, to inform him of his discovery. However, while still on the phone, he is surprised by the Kameraden and killed. With the help of his sister Esther, British journalist Sidney Beynon and Jewish-American vigilante leader David Bennett, Lieberman begins investigating the deaths of civil servants fitting the profile who die suddenly over the next few months. He is struck by the fact that all of the dead men have sons aged 13 who look exactly alike, with pale skin, dark hair and blue eyes. He discovers that all of the boys were illegally adopted, and that some of the adoptions were facilitated by Kameraden member Frieda Maloney, who has since been jailed. Lieberman interviews Maloney, who tells him that the boys were provided by an intermediary in Brazil. She mentions that one of the adoptive fathers she dealt with, American Henry Wheelock, gave her a newborn puppy in exchange for his baby. Seeking an explanation for the boys' identical appearance, Lieberman consults the biologist Dr Bruckner, who explains the principles of cloning. Lieberman deduces that the boys are clones of Adolf Hitler, all created from a single DNA sample by Mengele, who has also been seeking to ensure that their childhoods imitate that of the original Hitler by having them adopted by parents who resemble Hitler's own abusive father Alois (a civil servant in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and doting mother Klara, in the hope that their later lives will also follow the same course and that as adults they will establish new Nazi regimes in their respective countries.