Directed by John Schlesinger • 1976 • United States
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider

One of the most terrifying films of the 1970s stars Dustin Hoffman as a New York City grad student and marathon runner who finds himself plunged into a paranoid nightmare when he becomes entangled with the ruthless Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a sadistic Nazi war criminal on the hunt for stolen diamonds who happens to have a taste for, ahem, unorthodox dentistry. The contrasting acting styles of Olivier and Hoffman—the former a classically trained technician, the latter a devotee of the Method—amplifies the film’s nerve-wracking tension.