John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) directed this epic international thriller based on the debut novel by Thomas Harris, creator of Hannibal Lecter. Robert Shaw, in a rare and welcome heroic leading role, is a world-weary Mossad agent on the trail of a Black September terrorist (Marthe Keller) and her unstable partner (Bruce Dern) planning an unthinkable crime on US soil.

John Williams’s score adds to the pulse-pounding excitement, and the screenplay by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross, and Ivan Moffat gives the characters on both sides of the conflict their due.

A London psychiatrist (Robert Newton, Around the World in 80 Days, 1956) smuggles acid from work daily to a blitzed building, with the aim of killing and dissolving the body of his wife’s American lover (Phil Brown, best known as Uncle Owen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, 1977). Featuring a stirring score by Italian composer Nino Rota (The Godfather, 1972), this slow-burn relationship drama turns into a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse once Scotland Yard sets its sights on the missing American. Feverishly directed by blacklisted, Oscar-nominated Edward Dmytryk (Crossfire, 1947), this story is truly where Kafka meets film noir.