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 with which an anti-communist organisation controls its worldwide anti-Soviet spy network.
US film poster
Andre de Toth, Ken Russell and Michael Caine in Helsinki, February 1967, when the shooting began there.
Finnish ice hockey club RU-38 performed an ice hockey fight with Karhu-Kissat for the film.
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films were mainly liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.
Russell in 1971
Producer Andre de Toth, Ken Russell, and Michael Caine in Helsinki during production of Billion Dollar Brain, in Sofiankatu, Finland (1967)
Russell in 2002