Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
 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).
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