Billion Dollar Brain

1 9 6 7 (UK)

Following The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966), producer Harry Saltzman turned to up-and-coming British director Ken Russell to direct Billion Dollar Brain - and wound up with the most wildly surreal, and strangely poetic, film in the Harry Palmer series. 

Michael Caine's Palmer turns to the private eye business but is forced back into Britain's service to deliver an odd package to an old friend (Karl Malden). He infiltrates an organisation controlled by a deranged American general (Ed Begley), who plans to use his computer network to start a war with Latvia and other countries of the Communist regime

Palmer finds himself wrapped in fur, roaming around the Scandinavian tundra with gorgeous, enigmatic Françoise Dorleac (Catherine Deneuve's sister, who died at a tragically young age), while they try to foil the megalomaniac plans of Begley (giving one of the most deranged performances of the decade) with assistance from a past Russian nemesis (Oscar Homolka).