ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Michael Caine again stars as Britain's reluctant secret agent, Harry Palmer.

This time Caine is up against a hawkish billionaire (Ed Begley, Sr.) who plans to use his private mini-army and his strategy-planning supercomputer to engineer an attack on Russia which will start a Russian revolution, not to mention the possible kick-off of World War III, forcing America to defeat the commies once and for all.

The problem with Begley's plan is that his assistant (Karl Malden) is feeding the super-computer phony data so he can embezzle money from Begley's war fund. As in the first two films ("The Ipcress File", "Funeral in Berlin"), Harry stays one step ahead of personal disaster only by sheer luck, not by any exercise of Bond-like skill.

Directed by Ken Russell. The Harry Palmer series was England's answer to it's own boastful Bond craze. America's answer was a bigger-and-better boast — "Our Man Flint".


_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

Here's a jazzy trailer for this spy thriller which is noticeably less glitzy than the popular Bond films, although the trailer suggests it's non-stop action.

These things are never non-stop action, so we aren't fooled.

_________

However, this next video seems to be a fan-made trailer (very well done), despite the fact that it's listed on YouTube as the "opening credits".

_________
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

A few interesting items from IMDB!
________________________________

The voice of the computer is Donald Sutherland's.

A note from me: The man who was the evil villain in The Hunger Games is perfect for the voice of the computer!

Michael Caine performed most of his own stunts. During the final ice floe scene, he almost slipped and fell into freezing water.

A note from me: Alfred from the Batman franchise can easily handle a little freezing water!
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

My goodness, how times have changed!

Now we have a millionaire president who thinks the U.S. military is his personal army, and who adores his buddy Vladimir Putin — even when American intelligence agencies keep telling him that Putin is paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American soldiers.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

A criticism of the movie when it came out, was that after how grounded in reality the first two movies were, this one was as fantastic as any James Bond movie. But the movie is actually very faithful to the novel!

In the books the character's name is never mentioned. They came up with the name Harry Palmer for the movies.

David.