The Boys From Brazil (1978)

“The Boys From Brazil” is a mash-up paranoid mystery/Nazi thriller from the twisted mind of Ira Levine (the novels “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Stepford Wives”). With classic actors. Here, Gregory Peck drinks everyone’s milkshake as a fictionalized version of Josef Mengele, living in South America and working SS-style decades after World War II. Fellow movie god Laurence Olivier grabs a straw, too, and slurps right back as Nazi hunter and all-around eccentric Ezra Lieberman. The climax has the men meet for a gloriously violent, over-the-top battle in a seemingly quaint Lancaster County, Pa., home. Delicious. I spent summer there as a child. Several plot strands (a captive South American boy) are left aside, and Steve Guttenberg is unconvincing as a young Nazi hunter who sets the plot going, but the climax is sick, lovely mind-screw Levine. Bonus points: Scariest screen child ever, over “Omen” and some (bleeped) up dogs. Not high art, not meant to be, but damn fine 1970s entertainment. B+