MACK #50: The Boys From Brazil & Thumb Wrestler 2

May 14, 2019February 12, 2020 MACK | Middle Aged Cool Kids

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Heyooo!

We’re back this week with a movie review/discussion. We watched 1978’s The Boys from Brazil based on the novel by Ira Levin of the same name. The Boys from Brazil is available to watch FREE on youtube. I’ll link to it below.

Fair warning! There be spoilers ahead and throughout the podcast.

Recently I read Bill O’Reilly’s book “Killing The SS.” It is all about Jewish Nazi hunters who searched the world for escaped Nazi war criminals. It is a fascinating read. One of the many things that stuck with me was how eager or willing people were to move on and put the crimes of the Nazis behind them. Some of these criminals had escaped and traveled by boat to South America, where they continued living their lives with little fear of being found. You’d think more would have been done to go and find those folks.

Anyhoo, reading Killing The SS reminded me of this movie for various reasons. Dave had never seen it, and it’s free to watch on youtube, so here we are.

We start off with the trailer, which is extremely misleading when it doesn’t have to be.

It really plays as if this is a full-out horror movie and it’s probably because of how popular horror movies were at the time. The Omen II, Magic, Halloween, and Jaws 2 were just some of the films The Boys From Brazil was competing against. So, yeah. I get why the trailer is misleading.

The movie stars some top notch classic actors. Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier and James Mason. And though Olivier’s health had begun to decline, he is absolutely perfect as Ezra Liebermann, the aging Nazi hunter who pieces together Josef Mengele’s diabolical plan to bring the Third Reich back to its former glory. Gregory Peck’s Mengele is equally as good, though the shadow of his mustache distracted me at times.

Other than the classic actors, we’re also introduced to a young Steve Guttenberg who opens the movie with some amateur spying antics that wind up not going so well for him in the end.

Watch the movie for yourself right here:

After we chat about The Boys From Brazil we turn our attention to Thumb Wrestler 2: The Second Thumbing. This is the second in the series from everyone’s favorite indie comedy writer Mark Levitt (@wiggybloogy on Twitter). Check out the trailer I was inspired to make after watching this second entry in the Thumb Wrestler series!