Billion Dollar Brain

Billion Dollar Brain
Directed byKen Russell
Screenplay byJohn McGrath
Based onBillion-Dollar Brain
by Len Deighton
Produced byHarry Saltzman
Starring
CinematographyBilly Williams
Edited byAlan Osbiston
Music byRichard Rodney Bennett
Production
companies
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • 20 December 1967 (1967-12-20) (US)
Running time
111 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office$1.5 million (US/Canada)[1]

Billion Dollar Brain is a 1967 British espionage film directed by Ken Russell and based on the 1966 novel Billion-Dollar Brain by Len Deighton. The film features Michael Caine as secret agent Harry Palmer, the anti-hero protagonist. The "brain" of the title is a sophisticated computer[2] with which an anti-communist organisation controls its worldwide anti-Soviet spy network.

Billion Dollar Brain is the third of the Harry Palmer film series, preceded by The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966). It is the only film in which Ken Russell worked as a mainstream 'director-for-hire', and the last film of Françoise Dorléac. A fourth film in the series, an adaptation of Horse Under Water, also to be released by United Artists, was tentatively planned but never made.[3] Caine played Palmer in two later films, Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg.

  1. ^ "Big Rental Films of 1968". Variety. Penske Business Media. 8 January 1969. p. 15. Retrieved 17 July 2018. Please note this figure is a rental accruing to distributors.
  2. ^ The computer consoles in the film are Honeywell 200 mainframe consoles.
  3. ^ "Par 'Funeral' Opening Dec. 22 in New York". The Film Daily. Vol. 129. 22 August 1966. p. 90. Retrieved 17 July 2018.