Sadly, every so often the real world throws up a mad scientist who takes the horrors and excesses of fictional realms to disturbing new heights - one such scientist was the Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele, otherwise known as the Angel of Death, a man whose fascination with genetics and deformities led him to commit an untold number of unspeakable acts on the victims who filled the concentration camps during the Second World War. The Boys From Brazil picks up after the war and takes us to Paraguay in the 1970s, where a number of high profile Nazis were thought to be hiding out in the aftermath of the war, holding clandestine meetings and plotting the return of the Reich to the global stage. It follows Ezra Lieberman (played by Laurence Olivier) an aging Nazi hunter who sets out to track down Mengele and gets more than he bargained for once he's deep inside the jungles of Latin America. The Boys From Brazil merges history, fiction and speculation to good effect, with an all-star cast which also features James Mason and Gregory Peck and able direction from Hollywood stalwart Franklin Schaffner which swiftly drives the intrigue forwards. As for what it is that Mengele is cooking up in his jungle laboratory, let's just say it bring a new definition to the expression "master race".
