So, that's five movies (and a bunch of special features) that kept me busy for the better part of a month. How'd it go?
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the American disc at Amazon
The Imprint disc includes the trailer, and it's kind of telling that, even more than highlighting how this is based on a very popular novel and some of the people who worked on the James Bond movies, it promotes Michael Caine as an exciting young face to watch. Obviously, they got that call right: I don't know that the pointedly non-Bond-like spy story is actually that great, but everything that would make Caine a star in the 1960s and 1970s is here from the start, just the right ingredient to make a movie that flirts with dryness kind of exciting.
Caine plays Harry Palmer (nameless in the original Len Deighton novels), a former soldier that got a little bit too entrepreneurial with the supplies and was given the choice of working for MI-5 or prison. He's bored out of his mind doing surveillance for Colonel H.L. Ross (Guy Doleman), who seconds the insubordinate agent to Major Dalby (Nigel Green), a stuffy middle-manager investigating the abduction of British scientists who, when ransomed, are seemingly unable to continue their work.
Palmer was given a name for the movies, presumably because dialog that avoids mentioning it would have called attention to the filmmakers trying to avoid naming him more than it would have allowed him to be an anonymous functionary in the way that a novel told in the first person would (the special features tell what feel like oft-repeated stories about Caine and the producers trying to come up with the most unobtrusive name possible). Which is not to say Palmer is a cipher - he is a man of intelligence and taste, but with a scrappy, working-class edge to him, a guy you can easily imagine doing the crimes alluded to but also honest enough in his way, observant and willing to take the straightest line between points A and B even when it's not the done thing. He is in this way the template for every character Caine would play over at least the next twenty years, at least until he became a familiar and reassuring presence, and he's got it down to a science from the start. He's well-paired with everybody else in the film - Guy Doleman as the boss who knows you've got to embrace all of Palmer to get his best work, Nigel Green as the aristocratic officer who is increasingly irrelevant in post-war Britain, Sue Lloyd as the office girl who knows exactly what Palmer is up to, Gordon Jackson as a veteran who has just the class and experience to be amusedly aloof, etc. - and it never becomes a story about Palmer, or the sort of 1960s Brit he embodies, but who he is feels essential to the story and Michael Caine feels essential to that.
It's wrapped around a story about brainwashing, which is central to a few high-profile Cold War thrillers (The Manchurian Candidate being the most obvious), and looking at it from 60 years later, it's kind of odd that it was not a big part of more. It was, after all, presented as an existential ideological conflict, and the fear that one could have one's brain broken to embrace communism despite it being obviously inferior (and, indeed, necessitating some sort of traumatic attack) was embedded deep enough to still persist today, despite somewhat different targets. There's maybe a metaphor to that sort of collectivism smothering individual genius or making one a mindless pawn, even with the idea that Palmer's rebellious streak is what might serve as a bulwark against it.
Or not; the film is rather too matter-of-fact to lean into that sort of thing. It makes for an entertaining watch, though, as Palmer does something more like actual police work than one sees in crime or espionage films, finding the short cuts through his networks that would give him information the likes of Dalby wouldn't even consider important. It climaxes on a grueling attack on his mind as he tries to resist brainwashing, an impressively surreal moment that nevertheless emphasizes the crudity of the process, like Palmer isn't important enough for bespoke mind-control.
All in a day's work, of course, although Palmer and the film have no illusions about the nobility of such work.
Funeral In Berlin
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon
Following The Ipcress File about a year and a half later, Funeral in Berlin is probably the best of the Harry Palmer films, especially for those who come to them looking for a sort of anti-James Bond. It's the purest game of spy-versus-spy (versus spy?) of the bunch, with a story that demands attention and a reminder of just how present some elements we take for granted were at the time.
It has Palmer (Michael Caine) dispatched to Berlin, where he had been stationed at the time of his arrest, to facilitate the defection of Col Stok (Oscar Homolka), a KGB official about to be transferred from Berlin to somewhere far less prestigious and feeling disrespected, a huge get if for real, and one who demands his extraction be handled by Kreutzman (Günter Meisner), who has proven the most capable and audacious at smuggling people across the border. Palmer will be working with Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), a co-conspirator in the larceny that got Harry blackmailed into the secret service (although Harry kept his mouth shut). He immediately finds he has the attention of model Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), and while Harry isn't necessarily one to feel she's too beautiful for the likes of him, he's not a big believer in coincidence, either.
More so that the other films, Funeral is concerned with the mechanics of spycraft, how one goes about arranging something which must be audacious and almost undetectable, linking the skills of both street criminals and officials at anonymous desks doing boring file-pulling. The filmmakers put together a lean, streamlined tale with very few unnecessary parts, even though some may look like needless procedural detail. The main set-pieces of extractions are thrilling and full of a sort of whimsy amid the serious business, and as before, the ensemble around Caine is well-chosen: Everybody easily embodies what they appear to be, enough to keep everything moving forward in parallel with the audience not necessarily questioning more than they are meant to, and easily maintain that sense even their hidden agendas are revealed. The key to being a good spy, apparently, is presenting as much truth as one can so as not to slip up, and a good thriller reveals the parts of the lie that matter without making one feel a fool for missing it.
Which, inevitably, leads to something devastating for the seemingly aloof Palmer: On the one hand, he finds himself still quite capable of rage even beyond the manipulation by friends and foe that he has come to accept as par for the course. For as cynical as he is, he's not actually close to amoral, and while it's been fun to see him puzzle his way through things and adapt when he can't, there are points at the film where he's got to deal with anally not being who he had hoped and the fact that an enemy rather likes him despite it all. It's not a big breakdown scene, but one does get enough of a sense of Harry that it's not exactly surprising that he's done all he could to leave this life behind by the start of the next movie.
Billion Dollar Brain
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the all-region Australian box set at Amazon
It's easy to get kind of excited but also somewhat wary when getting ready to watch Billion Dollar Brain: This is the most overtly spy-fi premise of the three Harry Palmer stories, often treated as more grounded than the rest of the genre, but it's also got Ken Russell in the director's chair, and maybe a screwy story will allow for a preview of Russell's later, stranger work. Or maybe it will just be a mess.
As it starts, Palmer (Michael Caine) is working as a low-rent private eye, finishing another tawdry divorce case only to find prior employer Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) waiting for him, looking to bring him back into the fold. Palmer refuses, but also takes a call from a recorded voice that wants to hire him to deliver a sealed package to Helsinki, where he's to meet American comrade Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden), though it's his paramour Anya (Françoise Dorléac) who is at the airport when he arrives. These two threads are, of course, the same case, with Palmer realizing he's smuggling eggs filled with a dangerous virus, and that Newbigen is working for - and plans to recruit Harry into - an anti-communist organization led by a former General Midwinter (Ed Begley Sr.) whose activities are plotted by a fancy computer. Harry is dispatched to Latvia to facilitate a revolution before arriving at Midwinter's Texas compound.
If it were a better movie, Billion Dollar Brain would be ripe for rediscovery. It's not just that it's ahead of time on seeing the dangers of artificial intelligence and "patriotic" American organizations whose symbols are too Nazi-adjacent for it to be a coincidence, but either Len Deighton's novel or John McGrath's screenplay has also zeroed in on the very specific point that these things are actually not that bright, easily manipulated and played by grifters who, sure, maybe agree with some of the goals but mostly want to drain the big rich moron terrified of paying taxes as much as possible. The film is at its most memorable when Begley is full of bluster in his weird compound or addressing his large but deeply silly militia. It's an insight that many are still just coming around to 60 years later, and for all that Russell and company have great fun with the insanity of it, they're still to be taken seriously as threats, if only for the chaos they create if not for their ability to achieve their goals.
Unfortunately, there wind up being a few too many threads going on here for the whole thing to form a good pattern. The deadly bioweapon, the astroturfed Latvian rebels, and Newbigen's scheming all wind up at cross-purposes to each other, there's not really a great spot for Anya inside all of this, and as much fun as it is to see Oscar Homolka's Colonel Stok again, he feels more like fanservice than a clever insert. There's something that seems like it has real potential at the core - is Harry more disgusted with the way everyone in the spy business uses each other to join up with Newbigen to leach off Midwinter or horrified at how these cavalier monsters could get a lot of well-intentioned Latvians killed? - and the idea that trying to fight something as incoherent but well-funded as this organization is actually really difficult could fold in there, but it never all comes together, rather than just being a bunch of things happening.
Indeed, it's mostly good at the extremes, whether that be Michael Caine continuing to charm and seduce as the smart, pragmatic Palmer or the broadest American nonsense. There's some fun in between, but the film doesn't fully figure out how to have capable agents tussle with screwy villains.
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon
I was a tad surprised to see Shin Dong-heon's 1967 animated features seemingly owing more to Disney and other American animation houses than those of Japan, but why not? Despite the two countries being physically close, Japanese occupation was well within living memory and there were plenty of American army bases in the country on top of Hollywood's global reach. It does, nevertheless, make is somewhat ironic that the preservation and restoration of this film hinged on a Japanese print.
The film itself starts with Minister Hong (voice of Lee Chun-sa) being told by a fortune-teller that he must kill his concubine's son Gil-dong (voice of Kim Suil) in order to avoid a doom of his own. He doesn't have the heart to do it (which is good, because it's a ruse by his envious wife) and instead exiles Gil-dong. Gil-dong accepts this stoically, and soon meets Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won), a diminutive but spunky wanderer, and the pair make enemies of despotic governor Um Ga-jin (voice of Yeom Seok-ju). In order to fight him, Gil-dong studies swordsmanship with Master Baekun (Lee Wu-yeing), during which time Um's power grows and begins to threaten the elder Hong.
The film is based upon a Joseon-era epic that was itself likely inspired by a Korean Robin Hood figure (although the research connecting them would not be published until a couple years after this film), or at least a portion of one version of it, and it being such a large work that a 67-minute film can only cover so much is a bit of a problem: Writer Shin Dong-woo seems to pick the important highlights that form into a story the best, but it's kind of inert. Not boring, really, but maybe too steady - Gil-dong doesn't really evolve much over the film, mostly becoming more skilled with a sword, and his ties to Chadol Bawi, farm girl God-dan and her father, or even the various villains, don't exactly intensify. One expects that all happens over the course of a long novel, but director Shin Dong-heon and screenwriter Shin Dong-woo have beats they need to hit and every extra cel is time and money, so it's streamlined.
It looks great, though, the animation is smooth and the designs are appealing, showing plenty of Disney and Fleischer influence. I'm not sure how far off it is from other Korean animated films of the period - a quick glimpse at the booklet suggests it was a major hit and spawned imitators quickly, along with an immediate follow-up/spin-off for Cadol Bawi. It's a nifty little movie, and while I've kind of harped on its faults because it was a disjointed thing to watch at night - I kept thinking I'd nodded off and missed something only to see that it just leapt forward a bit - it looks pretty great for its origin and period.
Hopi and Chadol Bawi
* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (when available)
Work must have started on Hopi and Chaol Bawi just about as soon as The Story of Hong Gil-dong hit South Korean screens, because it came out the same year, and it certainly seems to benefit both from the previous film's success and from perhaps being less tied to famous source material: It's a bigger, more fantastic adventure that lets the crew from the first stretch in new directions rather than be penned in by respecting the original novel.
With Hong Gil-dong busy with official duties, sidekick Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won) goes out looking for master swordsman Hopi, hoping to learn his lightning sword technique. Hopi saves him from attacking wolves, but disappears into the night, while thief Gomsoe is happy to take credit. Hopi, it turns out, is not the defender of the oppressed that Chadol Bawi imagined, Nevertheless, the three wind up having their paths cross with corrupt officials who intend to cede the northern part of the kingdom to the Jurchen tribe, led by a shapeshifting wizard.
Hong Gil-dong wasn't a bad movie at all, but its central character being unfailingly righteous and heroic could make it feel very predictable; here, the filmmakers let Chadol Bawi's earnest youthfulness take center stage and let Hopi's bitterness and Gomsoe's willingness to go along serve as counterpoints. It puts friction into the picture, and suspense, and the revelation of the tragedy in Hopi's past makes everything more operatic rather than just being spelled out like in the previous movie. It's not really a complicated story, but it lets kids watching identify with Chadol Bawi and feel a little nervous about where Hopi might wind up, which is a genuine emotional hook.
On top of that, the trio gets to occasionally face monsters instead of just bandits and soldiers, which allows director Shin and his compatriots to really let loose, using the tools of animation to have impossible things happen, design exaggerated creatures, and make alpha villain Somasul especially a worthy adversary. Even the less supernatural action scenes such as the attacking wolves toward the beginning are striking. It's a dizzying land of adventure and legend at times, and the animation is pretty darn good, occasionally showing some of the looping that you'd see in the Fleischer cartoons that clearly serve as an inspiration but also some Disney grandiosity.
It can kind of be a lot at times, especially at the end, when you're enjoying the big action sequences but also maybe mentally thinking back and wondering if all these folks being bad guys makes sense; were they ever working against each other before being revealed as allies? It's also got a last-minute revelation that's kind of inevitable even if it's not really set up or hinted at, as much because you kind of need to give Hopi something after all this. That's not a bad thing - it feels right - but it kind of feels like it came out of nowhere.
Perhaps surprisingly, after doing these two features, Shin Dong-heon would not direct another, instead working in television (including a stint at Nelvana in Canada) and writing about music. Perhaps Korean productions got crowded out between American and Japanese animation, or perhaps the overwhelming nature of theatrical animation was overwhelming. Either way, he leaves behind a couple of striking films that deserve to be more than a footnote in the history of global animation.
Well, that's a lot - how's it affect the score?
Dale Evans: 31½ stars
Centipede: 28¾ stars
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