Review – Telefon

A rogue KGB operative is activating a series of Manchurian candidates and sending them off on missions of mayhem and destruction by calling them up on the phone and reciting a few lines from “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” And I thought I was the only one who was sent into an uncontrollable, homicidal rage by Robert Frost’s poetry. Charles Bronson plays an assassin sent by the Soviets to kill the rogue (Donald Pleasance) before his campaign torches off World War Three. Despite the fact that this has got to be an all-time low for the number of people Bronson kills per 90 minutes of screen time, this is actually a fairly amusing bit of Cold War drama decreased very little by the death of the Soviet Union (in fact, it might be interesting to see this remade with post-Soviet politics in mind). Mildly amusing