Movie review: ‘Telefon’

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I went the amazon.com video route to watch “Telefon,” which is a 1970s Charles Bronson espionage thriller. As this film is from the 1970s, don’t expect spectacular visuals. In fact, for “Telefon,” a film like this suffers from a bad case of the ’70s: “Telefon” looks old and the cinematography wasn’t very good, even by standards of the time. Still, this one isn’t bad and, best of all, has a terrifically creative plot that has since dissolved over time. The present has created new dangers, but it is interesting to see what possible dangers folks faced 50 years ago.

‘Telefon’
(1977; 102 minutes; rated PG; directed by Don Siegel and starring Charles Bronson, Lee Remick, Donald Pleasence and Tyne Daly)

NEAT STORY DOESN’T STAND TEST OF CINEMATIC TIME

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional trivia and opinion and the updating of links on June 23, 2020. I again updated the review on July 9, 2025.)

The thing I like best about the movie “Telefon” is that it is creative. The espionage plot, while not totally original, has a wonderful twist and subsequently an obvious ending. However and overall, “Telefon” is an entertaining film with Charles Bronson – and the ’70s fashions, cars and locales are all eye candy – and the movie is easily found on your streaming sources.

“Telefon” is the story of a threat to the then-emerging détente between the U.S. and Soviet Union. It seems the Russians had planted agents across the U.S. years before and now a disaffected KGB officer is beginning to activate them to do sabotage acts that will threaten the shaky relationship between the superpowers.

The neat twist is that all the agents don’t know they’re agents – they are Russians introduced into American society years before after having been hypnotized into believing themselves real Americans and having had a sabotage mission planted into their subconscious. They become activated by hearing part of a Robert Frost poem along with the mention of their Russian name – which can be done (and is being done) via a telephone call. Hence the title “Telefon.”

Also, in the time passed since they were placed in the U.S., their acts of sabotage are, well, not all that threatening now.

I know that there have been films about brainwashing (take “The Manchurian Candidate” with Frank Sinatra in the original), but this one’s twist about the agents themselves – now part of local communities from a priest to a pilot to a housewife (oh, no, not that word) – not knowing they are agents is particularly nice.

The sequencing of the film is wonderful right up to the final minutes when Bronson and the woman who’s been helping him stop at a lone phone booth – right in the middle of a bridge over an interstate highway. OK, so that’s how it worked then … pull the phone booth off the production truck and plop it down anywhere!

Here’s a look at the film through some of the principal cast:

  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Bronson does his usual stoic best here as KGB “Maj. Grigori Borzov.” Although Bronson has his usual lack of emotional spectrum, it works well here. He’s efficient, cold and mission-oriented and communicates his character very well. I certainly liked him better as both a character and for his work in “Death Wish” (click here to read my review), which is in my opinion his signature role and peak as an actor, as well as his movie “The Mechanic” (click here to read my review) about an assassin. Bronson passed in 2003 at 81 of pneumonia and had suffered Alzheimer’s Disease. He was also memorable in the legendary World War II thrillers “The Great Escape” (click here to read my review) and “Battle of the Bulge” (click here to read my review).
  • An Oscar nominee (not for this one), Lee Remick plays “Barbara,” who is a Russian agent in America – but also, sorry about the spoiler, an American agent pretending to be a Russian agent. So, she’s a double. Like Bronson, she does a good job at communicating her character, but doesn’t manage to flex her obvious acting chops necessary to have made this a special work. Remick was nominated for “Days of Wine and Roses” and you’ll probably remember her from the horror classic “The Omen” (click here to read my review). She died of cancer at 55 in 1991.
  • The big surprise for me was that Tyne Daly is in “Telefon.” A five-time Golden Globe nominee (none for this one), Daly is young(er) and just shimmers with energy whenever she’s on screen. Daly plays “Dorothy Putterman” and is a CIA computer analyst. Since 1977 was the stone age in computing, her character is stereotypically a bit eccentric. However, she’s wonderfully likable and engaging and I like her here almost as much as I did in Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” sequel (click here to read my review of the original) called “The Enforcer” (click here to read my review). Four of her five nominations was for TV’s “Cagney & Lacey” and has notched more than 100 film and TV credits in a seven-decade career (her first was in 1954 as “Girl” in a TV show called “Foreign Intrigue”).
  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Donald Pleasence plays the bad guy, but doesn’t get much screen time as “Nicholi Dalchimsky.” You see him a bunch (and you quickly learn the code phrase), but Pleasence doesn’t get any chance to put his acting talent on display. I’d say it is his distinctive voice and appearance that landed him the part – otherwise, any character actor could have filled this role. I enjoyed him much more in two distinctly different films but both classic in their genre: “The Great Escape” war film with Bronson (click here for my review) and John Carpenter’s seminal horror flick “Halloween” (click here for my review). Pleasence died of complications from heart valve surgery at 75 in 1995.
  • None of Russian agents doing sabotage in the U.S. is work an individual review here, but I’ll single out one: John Mitchum, who plays “Harry Bascom.” He doesn’t do anything with what little part he has in the film, but I liked him in several films in Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” franchise (click here for my take on the original) and he was Robert Mitchum’s brother. He was also in Eastwood’s perfect western “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (click here to read my review), but didn’t have a memorable role. He died of a stroke at 82 in 200.

“Telefon” as a visual is quite fitting of the time as the movie looks more like a “Columbo” TV movie being shot than a major motion picture with one of the major stars of the day. The cinematography stinks and locales leave a lot to be desired.

I’m not sure why director Don Siegel put an extended sequence in the middle of the film when Sheree North as housewife “Marie Willis” does her sabotage thing. It doesn’t move the film forward to see her work and actually brings a slower-paced film to almost a standstill.

My streaming cost was well-spent on “Telefon.” It was pretty much as I remembered it and I liked seeing all the mid-1970s cars in the exteriors.

“Telefon” did not rank in the top 10 films of 1977 and I wasn’t able to find any box office reports on the film (I will admit it was a cursory search). The No. 1 film of the year was (not surprisingly) “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” with that very first “Star Wars” film bringing in $307.2 million at the U.S. box office, according to Wiki. To give a little context as to the box office that year, the No. 10 film was “Annie Hall” with $38.2 million. The films from 1977 that I’ve reviewed are:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Bronson’s birth name was Charles Dennis Buchinsky; and Daly’s full birth name is Ellen Tyne Daly.
  • It was an enjoyable surprise to see Burton Gilliam as “Gas Station Attendant” and hear his distinctive drawl, which was quite subdued compared to him in “Blazing Saddles” (click here for my review) or “The Jericho Mile” (click here for my review).
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Director Don Siegel asked Charles Bronson to shave his trademark mustache off for this movie. Bronson replied, ‘No mustache, no Bronson.’ Siegel said in his book ‘A Siegel Film: An Autobiography’, ‘I felt that inasmuch as Bronson wore a heavy mustache in Russia, it would help his disguise if he had no mustache when he arrives in Canada. However, he didn’t want to shave it off.’”
  • Russia didn’t like the film (no kidding) and its expressed dislike made headlines.
  • At one point, Bronson uses the identity “Dr. Spota.” The name Spota is a favorite of co-screenwriter Peter Hyams, who would use the name as a character when he directed Sean Connery and Mark Harmon in “The Presidio” (click here to read my review).
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “The name of the poem used as the code spoken over the telephone to activate sleepers was ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost. This poem was originally published in 1923 in his collection titled ‘New Hampshire’. The exact lines from the poem heard in the movie each time were: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”

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