The Boys from Brazil

Ira Levin's novel was so obviously devised for the cinema that it reads more like a script. Its premise was ingenious: why has a Nazi hit team from South America begun a systematic slaughter of innocuous middle-aged professional men all over Europe? The answer should have made a great thriller, but the film is sunk by a series of preposterous performances. There are more phony German accents than in a prep school version of Colditz, and Levin's expert plotting is buried beneath an avalanche of lines like 'Vat are we goink to do?'. Easy answer.