I’ve hoped that Telefon could be remade, but with better screenplay and direction. It had an annoying, 1970s look, and the cinematography was awful, like they were using cheap film stock.
Along with Bronson and Remick, they had Donald Pleasence and Patrick Magee, both of whom could milk a close up for all that it was worth, but got no close ups. The CIA scenes were throw aways.
They also could have pumped up the tension, kind of the flip side of Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, which was made just five years later, yet was very intense and paranoid. This would have been interesting to American audiences: Soviet spies coming to the US and being scared and tense, afraid of their shadows.
Telefon needed an almost Kubrick approach to direction, and the Russians could have been so dangerous that even real Russian audiences would like it.
No reason for the drug induced hypnosis agents to be automatons, either. They could be Jason Bourne quality killers when carrying out their mission, even if they were old hippies in real life. Russian baby boomer ninjas.
I'm kind of fond of that '70s look. "Three Days of the Condor" is like that as well.