Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

For complete cast and crew information: IMDB complete cast and crew information

Length: 111 min.

Premiere: 5 December 1967 (Trans Lux East Theatre, New York)

General release UK: 21 January 1968

Official synopsis of Billion Dollar Brain

Official Trailer Billion Dollar Brain

TV-spot Billion Dollar Brain

Scroll down for 'making of' featurette of Billion Dollar Brain and interviews with the main actors!

Filmposters for Billion Dollar Brain

Billion Dollar Brain postergallery 1 click here

Billion Dollar Brain Italian postergallery 2 click here

Billion Dollar Brain postergallery 3 click here

Billion Dollar Brain video and dvd covers click here

Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards

For USA Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards click here

For UK Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards click here

For small Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards click here

For French Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards click here

German Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards (part 1) click here

German Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards (part 2) click here

German Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards (part 3) click here

German Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards (part 4) click here

German Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards (part 5) click here

Mexican Billion Dollar Brain lobbycards click here

Special publicity shots

Special still gallery 1 click here

Special still gallery 2 click here

Special still gallery 3 click here

Special still gallery 4 click here

Special still gallery 5 click here

Special still gallery 6 click here

Special still gallery 7 click here

Special still gallery 8 click here

Special still gallery 9 click here

Special still gallery 10 click here

Pressarticles

For a special editorial about Billion Dollar Brain click here

Pressarticles about Billion Dollar Brain click here

Featurette

Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning actor died Wednesday 1 July 2009. He was 97.He played the part of Leo Newbegin in Billion Dollar Brain. Malden died of natural causes surrounded by his family at his Brentwood home, they told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. He served as the academy's president from 1989-92. While filming Billion Dollar Brain (1968) at Pinewood Studies with Michael Caine, Malden's London hotel room was burgled and his cash stolen, but his travellers' chcheques were left untouched. The incident persuaded him to become the face of American Express travellers' cheques a few yeas later for a long-running series of commercials with the punchline "Don't leave home without them".

Interviews

Rare promotional interviews on set with three of the main characters of Billion Dollar Brain

Interview on set in Finland with Michael Caine -audio only-

Interview on set in Finland with Karl Malden (Leo Newbegin) -audio only-

Interview on set in Finland with Oscar Homolka (Colonel Stok) -audio only-

Video/DVD

Billion Dollar Brain has been released on dvd in Europe, Australia and the USA. A source on the Internet reports that Billion Dollar Brain has never been rereleased on video or on dvd before due to the licensing rights of the Beatles song that can be heard in the movie. They were said to be too expensive. A big shame but nevertheless MGM owns a wonderful scope videomaster of the movie which has now finally been used. For both region 1 and 2 dvd's the scenes with the Beatles track have been edited, but you can see these 32 seconds below this text. Funny enough there was a rental videotape, released in 1986, which contained the whole track/scene.

24 Feb'07 Andrew S. added: "Actually The Beatles themselves (or more accurately Apple Records) who actually made the use of that song in the film too expensive. Apple (The Beatles company) still owns the rights to their recordings, while Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. So if you wanted to use a recording of The Beatles, you would have to get their permission (and of course Michael Jackson would get a slice of the money). However if you just wanted to use a Beatles song but have somebody else record it, then you would only need to get permission from Michael Jackson's company. This is what happened in that Sean Penn film "I Am Sam". The producers wanted to use actual Beatle recordings, and I believe that Ringo, Paul and Yoko had all agreed, but they were waiting on George's agreement. But at the time he was very ill with cancer so they never actually got his go-ahead. So as a result, they couldn't use Beatle recordings so they just licenced a number of Beatle songs and got other people to record them."

See more covers click here.

A very (strange) short history of the Billion Dollar Brain dvd...

11 December 2001 The Harry Palmer Movie Site was informed by a well-informed source that MGM has made a dvd-testdisc of Billion Dollar Brain. The rights for the Beatles song in the movie and "a lack of appeal" seem to be the only reasons which can stop the release of Billion Dollar Brain on dvd in 2002.

23 July 2002 I am afraid that I have heard that MGM has dropped the plans for a dvd release in the near future...

30 May 2004 There are strong signs that Billion Dollar Brain will be officially released on DVD! The release date that is mentioned is 6 September 2004...Thanks to Bob Engesser

11 July 2004 Billion Dollar Brain will be officially released on DVD! The release date is indeed 6 September 2004...

6 September 2004 Billion Dollar Brain dvd released, region 2 / 4 dvd (Germany 7 September), 30 sec. 'Beatles-scenes' deleted.

4 October 2005: B$B dvd region 1(USA) released (no extra's but widescreen and fullscreen version)

• Region 2 Version

• Widescreen 2.35:1 Anamorphic

• Languages: English, German, French, Spanish

• 1 hour and 46 minutes (approx)

• Region 2 encoding (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt), PAL

• Release date UK 6 september 2004, Germany 7 September 2004

Memorabilia

The teaser trailer and a colour version of the rare featurette (little documentary and 'making of' stuff) of this movie can be found on the videotape "Spies, Sleuths and Private Eyes" (Spy Guise and Cara Entertainment). You can order this tape at the Spyguise shop. It also features a trailer of Funeral in Berlin.

Music

For information about the soundtrack of Billion Dollar Brain go to Soundtracks.

Trivia

For trivia and other strange stuff about Billion Dollar Brain go to the Trivia page !

Film locations

To see where all the scenes were shot, including 'then and now' shots and their Google Earth coordinates! See film locations.

Links to sites about Billion Dollar Brain

Doubleosection.blogspot.com Extensive review!

The allmovie.com site Good info about Billion Dollar Brain.

Bright Lights Film Journal - Billion Dollar Brain Nice review by Mark Dellar.

Richard Scheib's review Review, story and stuff about Ken Russell, the director

Ken Russell films page Scroll down to a very nice review of Billion Dollar Brain