Billion Dollar Brain (1967) on Netflix
Harry Palmer, now a private investigator after leaving MI5, is told by a mechanical voice to take a package to Helsinki. It holds six virus-laden eggs stolen from Porton Down.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb5.9/106,761 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
A mechanical voice on the telephone orders the former MI5 agent Harry Palmer, now working as a private investigator, to carry a package to Helsinki. Inside are six eggs infected with virus, taken from the British research facility at Porton Down. In Finland he is met by Anya, who brings him to her handler, Leo Newbigen, an old friend of Palmer's who is in love with her. His former MI5 superior, Colonel Ross, then abducts him and forces him back into government service to pursue the conspiracy and recover the eggs. Leo shows him a hidden room where a computer issues daily orders in the voice that summoned Palmer to Helsinki.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Françoise Dorléac, who played Anya, was killed in a car accident in Nice on 26 June 1967, about five weeks after shooting ended; because of her death it is unclear whether her voice was dubbed by another actress.
SPOILER
The ice scenes were shot on a disused airfield covered with salt, and the climax where General Midwinter's convoy breaks through the ice was filmed at Pinewood in a huge tank using polystyrene slabs as ice, because real vehicles were used instead of miniatures.- The concert scene Harry Palmer attends is supposed to feature Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony, but the music heard is the end of his 11th Symphony, "The Year 1905"; "Leningrad" music plays later over Midwinter's speech to his soldiers and the battle on the ice.
- Richard Rodney Bennett's score leaves out violins and flutes for a harsh brass-and-percussion sound built around three pianos, and uses the early electronic ondes Martenot, played by its most prominent soloist Jeanne Loriod, for the romantic passages.
- Otto Heller, who had photographed the first two Harry Palmer films, was meant to shoot Billion Dollar Brain but refused to take a medical examination, so the production could not hire him.
- The film was liked by David Picker at United Artists, who later hired Ken Russell to direct Women in Love.
