Telefon

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Telefon
Directed by	Don Siegel
Produced by	James B. Harris
Written by	Walter Wager (novel) Peter Hyams Stirling Silliphant
Starring	Charles Bronson Lee Remick Donald Pleasence
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	December 16 1977 U.S. release
Running time	102 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Telefon is a 1975 novel by Walter Wager with a mind control theme. It was made into a film in 1977, starring Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence and Lee Remick. It was directed by Don Siegel (of Dirty Harry fame).

Telefon's central theme is that, during the Cold War period of the 50s, the Soviet Union planted several long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents all over the United States, US citizens who had long ago been brainwashed into their cover stories so thoroughly that didn't know they were agents, ones to be used only in the event of nuclear war, at which point they would be activated to carry out their missions to cripple various selected parts of the US civil and military infrastructure. Now, over twenty years on, the Cold War is gradually tapering off. However, Nikolai Dalchimsky (Pleasence) a rogue senior KGB officer, disappears to America, taking with him the Telefon Book containing the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all of those sleeper agents, and starts activating them one-by-one by placing a phone call to each one in which he reads the catch phrase that restores their operational personality in order to carry out their sabotage tasks; a line from Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

The KGB dare not tell their own politicians, still less the Americans, about what is going on. It is up to one Colonel Borizov (Bronson) to go to the U.S., find Dalchimsky, and stop him before the politicians on both sides learn what's going on and start a full scale war.

[edit] Trivia

• The city skyline depicting Houston, Texas in the film is actually Great Falls, Montana, where the majority of the film was shot. The exploding building in one scene is actually the controlled demolition of the old Paris Gibson Junior High School in Great Falls, Montana.
• During the Houston scenes (shot on a Hollywood backlot), the interior of the Hyatt Regency is not the same as the real-life Houston location (the Houston, TX Hyatt Regency in Downtown Houston does not have the space-age elevators); the interior was shot at the 5 Embarcadero Center location instead in San Francisco, California.
• The fictional Halderville, Texas has a 214 area code (as depicted on a phone) – there is no Halderville, Texas in real life. At the time of the movie, 214 was the area code for the northeastern portion of Texas, including the city of Dallas and the eastern half of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It remains one of the three area codes used in Dallas and the eastern Metroplex.
• As parts of the film were shot in Finland, there are several cameo appearances by Finnish movie stars, most notably by Ansa Ikonen, arguably the most popular leading lady in the history of the country's cinema.
• Prior to Telefon, Donald Pleasance and Charles Bronson worked together in the World War II classic The Great Escape.
• The music heard over the opening credits was used as the theme music for CBS Sports' TV coverage of the PGA Tour (golf) from 1978 to 1984

[edit] Compare with

• The Manchurian Candidate
• The Simultaneous Man