Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

JohnHowardReid The other side is the good side in this ingenious thriller which also benefits from an extensive use of real locations. The screenplay, however, is somewhat thin on characterization. The narrative is fleshed out with two plots which only come together via the odd telephone call. Nonetheless, the pace is brisk and there is plenty of boom-boom action.Constant changes of locale also keep our attention focused. All in all, the film is reasonably enjoyable for those of us who don't pay too much attention on the dopey plot and are just along for the ride.The ever-reliable Pat Magree presents us with a brief but enjoyably hammy performance. Badel, however, is reduced to stooging. Donald Pleasense is not presented with many opportunities for fine acting either, even though his role is comparatively large.!

PimpinAinttEasy Dear Don Seigel,I am a fan of your movies. I mean some of them. You worked with all the real men in the 70s - Bronson, Clint, Wayne, Burt Reynolds etc. Sure most of your films were the big studio movie type. But you knew how to make a good film.With Telefon I think you did something very interesting. You provided the prototype for the big budget American action films of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Telefon was set in many different countries and I am sure some of the studio executives and filmmakers who came later saw this and told themselves "well, lets set our big budget action film in many different countries and give the audience a look around each place". Though it can be argued that even James Bond films did the same thing. But I am sure the makers of films like Bourne Identity were inspired by your films rather than James Bond movies.Charles Bronson was too tough to attempt pussy crap like method acting. He left that to people like Patrick Mcgee and Donald Pleasance. Lee Remick's age showed. And Tyne Daly in the role of an industrious agent stole her thunder.I felt like kicking the writers in the balls. They had such a great premise. I mean, this could have been as good as The Manchurian Candidate or something. There aren't too many films about MK Ultra's. It did not work as an action thriller. There were too many characters who repeated the same actions over and over to establish the premise. The plotting was inane though they did have some interesting ideas towards the end.I liked parts of Lalo Schifrin's score.Best Regards, Pimpin.(5/10)

Benoit Vanhees Telefon has several good trumps, but suffers here and there in a painful way from budget restrictions. The latter becomes clear within the 5 first minutes, as we see KGB people using a Mercedes van, while a top man sits waiting in a limo from the same German car company. Not really substantial, but it nevertheless gives the movie instantly something cheap, a made for TV-only label. One could debate about whether the presence of Donald Pleasance is helping or not. His acting is always a double edge sword: on the one hand, it is funny to see him exploit at the maximum the small roles he got, by using the most futile objects like a handkerchief ("Hell is a city"). On the other hand, he often portrayed the bad guys in a somewhat too pronounced and stereotypical way, which takes away a part of the suspense. His role in Fantastic voyage is a good example, and the same happens in Telefon. His blond whig he uses in the beginning of the movie adds to the "cheapo" character of the movie. Maybe the budget was somewhat mismanaged ? The blowing up an entire valley surely was impressive, and added credibility to the real menace the USA was facing. On the other hand, a few fireballs less here and there, but eastern European looking cars in stead would have been a nice compromise. Not withstanding these small imperfections, I quite liked this decent movie. Using brainwashed people to perform dirty jobs of course wasn't a new idea. In movies such as the Manchurian Candidate and Parallax View, this road already had been explored. What gives Telefon that extra menacing touch, is the fact that the 50 people on the KGB list live ordinary lives, unaware of the looming danger. We briefly meet a mother planning to make pancakes for her kids, a priest busy decorating his church, the owner of a helicopter taxi with money and marital problems, the owner of a car repair shop etc. And then, each of them is abruptly called away from their ordinary day-to-day lives. It almost would make you look quite suspiciously at friendly neighbors, who might or might not be too on a KGB-list, waiting to be activated and perform one specific task of death and destruction. The fact that one of the victims is used to destroy a disaffected military installation even adds an extra dimension to that lurking menace. This juxta-position of potentially dangerous people amids an innocent surrounding is of course no new formula. Still, it is used with cleverness here in Telefon. Still, maybe the generally somewhat too mild tension needed some extra punch here and there to make this a classic spy movie. (By the way, was it the CIA who was taking pictures from Borshov and Barbara, when they met at the airport ? It's not really followed up) Bronson was strictly "mission first" during 90 % of the movie, and immediately set the tone by asking Barbara not to be "so damned cheerful." But the American sun and beautiful all American girl Lee Remick had no trouble at all to melt the Soviet ice, and working at a détente at personal level. They look a bit like an unlikely silly pair, with no sparks flying around, just some decent double entendre (miles and miles to go...) Still, I always liked silly pairs ! Certainly much more than the all too obvious and slick matches such as in Hitchcock movies à la North by Northwest. Urk !Anyway, don't let such details spoil the fun. Nor should you be distracted by the very 1970's cheap looks of the motel rooms etc. "Domino principle" too had similar shortcomings, still it is fun to see that movie again every now and then for its own merits. Telefon is indeed –as another reviewer pointed out- "the ultimate détente movie", made in an era in which strategic arms limitations were agreed upon, and the Helsinki agreements were signed by 35 countries. Before that, in the post-Watergate period, we already got some movies, critical of the CIA or more shadowy agencies and security companies, such as "The Conversation", "Three days of the Condor" and "The Domino Principle". Here, things are even taken a step further: Russian agents are on high alert, because one of their own renegades is trying to trigger off a Third World War. So they send their top agent to the USA to clean up the mess... If a new McCarthy would have emerged under Reagan,Bronson and Remick would have been blacklisted because of what would have been labeled this "pinko" movie. In a way, the international diplomatic situation got once more reflected in the history of movie making. In 1943-45, there were some very pro Russian movies made by Hollywood,such as The North Star (1943) or Mission to Moscow (1943). After that came red scare movies such as the Red Menace or I married a Comminist. Things chanced again after the death of Stalin and the disgrace of Sen. Mc Carthy. The Bette Davis movie "Storm Center" (1956) for ex. is one of those movies that takes a more balanced approach to communism. Sputnik and Cuba once again made the pendulum move to the other side, while it swung back to the center left with efforts like Telefon. As such, this movie is an interesting witness of its time.

sol **SPOILERS** Whatever made high ranking KBG office clerk Nicolai Dalchimsky, Donald Pleasence,go off the deep end is never really explained in the movie "Telefon. Judging from the pad-or apartment- the Soviet Government provided Dalchimsky and his mother, Anas Ikonen, the two are living in luxury in that it's as big as a suite in the Park Plaza or Waldorf Astoria hotel that could cost as much as $3,000.00 for a nights stay! Dalchimsky also travels first class all throughout the movie all over the USA making you wonder if the evil and anti-Capitalistic Soviet System, who paid his salary, isn't quite as bad as its made out to be!Dalchimsky somehow got a hold of the names of some 50 Soviet Agents in the US who were planted there at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962. What's even worse Dalchisky has the code name for each agent that if he or she is told what it is will set them of to, like a bunch of mindless suicide bombers, blow themselves up together with the US military installations they were programed to destroy!Both the KGB and CIA work together in "Telefon" to stop Dalchimsky's madness by getting their two top agents Major Gigori Borzov, Charles Bronson, and Agent Barbara, Lee Remic, to both work together in stopping him. What's even worse then Dalchmsky's mad rush to ignite WWIII is that the present premier of the USSR is totally unaware of the secret suicide-bomber agents planted in the US! Which may well lead to a firing squad or a life long stay at a Soviet gulag for those, Borzov's superiors, responsible for them if he ever found out! Both Brozov and Barbara are driven around in circles by the clever but dangerously insane Dalchimsky who uses those underground Soviet agents, who are now hard working and law abiding American citizens, to cause havoc all over the US. Dalchimsky even went as far as having some two dozen top Soviet military and KGB personnel knocked offed which originally alerted the CIA with the help of their top computer whiz Dorothy Pullerman, Tyne Daly, of just what he's up to!***SPOILERS From This Point On**** The movie has Brozov and Brabara, posing as man and wife, chasing the slippery Dalchimsky from one major US city to another until they finally track the crazed psycho down in this little out of the way town in Texas. It's there that Dalchimsky's luck finally runs out but only after he, with the help of the Soviet underground agents, destroyed a good portion of the US economy.Charles Bronson being himself of Eastern European-Lithuanian Polish- descent is very convincing as Soviet KGB Agent Grigori Borzov. Bronson is given more lines in the movie then he usually has which makes his acting far more creditable with him not having to work over or gun down some dozen bad guys to keep him focused. The beautiful Lee Remic as US CIA Agent Barbara more then holds her own as Bronson's, or Borzov, partner. Barbara is under orders from her boss at the CIA Harley Sandburg, Frank March, to knock Borzov off once he completes his mission in terminating the out of control Nicolia Dalchimsky. It's in the final moments of the film that both Borzov and Barbara pull off the Big Switch! In them not following their bosses,in the CIA & KGB, orders in having them "come in" and-unknown to them-be terminated for the good job that they did. To also insure that the both CIA and KGB doesn't get any bright ideas, in offing them, Borzov & Barbara also destroy the list of the remaining Soviet Agents! Making it both impossible to find and terminate as well has having them being activated by a future malcontent and nut case like Nicolia Dalchimsky.