Telefon

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

Related Topics:
Walter Wager - Mind control - Donald Pleasance - Lee Remick - Charles Bronson - Don Siegel - Dirty Harry

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 (Pleasance) 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."

Related Topics:
Cold War - 50s - Sleeper agent - Brainwashed - Nuclear war - KGB - Catch phrase - Robert Frost

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~