Puppet on a Chain

Truly atmospheric Euro-thriller from the early seventies, boasting one of the best chase sequences ever, and a plot riddled with holes.

US Agent Paul Sherman (Taube) arrives in Amsterdam to investigate drug trafficking between Holland and the US. Together with undercover agent Maggie (Parkins) he begins to close in on the villains...

Given that Sherman and Maggie are working together, they don't seem to share much information. If they had debriefed each other a little more thoroughly, much of what eventually transpires could so easily have been avoided (e.g., how come Maggie fails to tell Paul about the dodgy nuns and the bibles she witnesses in church?). This (and the unexplained accents - a Swede playing a Dutch-American, a Brit and a Canadian playing Dutch) aside, it's action-packed, makes great use of its Dutch locations, and has a nice twisty ending.

Extra-groovy nightclub scene too!

Don't you just love it when you stumble across an unknown movie and discover it to be an instant favourite? That's the case with PUPPET ON A CHAIN, a virtually forgotten Alistair MacLean drug smuggling thriller that turns out to be one of the most entertaining of '70s thrillers. With shades of Bond and a wonderful setting in the atmospheric city of Amsterdam, this is up there with the best of genre a la the two FRENCH CONNECTION movies.

Sven-Bertil Taube is the solid lead, playing an American agent dispatched to the Netherlands to break up a drug-smuggling ring. Once there he finds himself pursued by an assassin while investigating some shady business ventures that may well be the front for heroin smuggling on a grand scale. The story is fine, but it's the action that makes this a class act: there's a speedboat chase to rival the ones in LIVE AND LET DIE and AMSTERDAMNED alongside plenty of other great suspense and action sequences.

Director Don Sharp, famous from his work for Hammer Studios, contributes to the action and stunts, in particular helping shoot the aforementioned speedboat chase which is the definite highlight and might be the best thing Sharp ever did. Elsewhere, a decent cast of character actors has been assembled, with unique-looking faces filling the cast list. The only thing this film needs now is a decent Blu-ray release...

Based on the famous novel by Alistair McLean, "Puppet on a String" brings secret agent Paul Sherman, played by Swedish actor and singer Sven-Bertil Taube, to the Dutch metropolis of Amsterdam. It's his turn to hunt a drug-smuggling gang and a corrupt policeman, and it takes some victims and actions until he faces the main villain on a dark harbor site in a last fatal fight.

The dark streets and canals of Amsterdam are a perfect setting for this seventies' thriller, and the action and suspense work pretty well. There is an incredibly breath-taking motor boat chase through the canals which looks takes the car chasing action of "Bullitt", "Vanishing Point" and "French Connection" a bit further and has been copied by Dick Maas in his Dutch 1987 psycho thriller "Amsterdamned". There are some really scary and psychedelic scenes in the movie, and Piero Piccionis great sound track adds much weight to the picture (and has been reissued two years ago on CD). A great forgotten action movie!

In Amsterdam to track down a murderous heroin smuggling ring, US agent Paul Sherman faces deadly danger at every turn as he seeks to unravel the mystery of how the drug is transported to the US, and to unmask those responsible.

I was quite cautious of seeing this Alistair Maclean film adaptation because Maclean movies can be a mixed bag, some great, some not-so, however I was quite surprised. It's a not bad adaptation, of course it's not as great as the book - which is one of my favourite Maclean novels - but it captures the book's vicious underbelly of the drugs world, the seedy Amsterdam streets and its canals, and the macabre puppets on a chain fairly well. There's some gritty action, the fistfights can be quite brutal and exciting. There's plenty of judo moves! Of course, this is all overshadowed by a 9 minute rousing boat chase between the good guy and bad guy. The problem is that the plot doesn't flow well and it looks like it's joined up with glue, however it's reasonably watchable.

Sven-Bertil Taube is quite tough and determined as Sherman, though he comes off a bit as a shop floor dummy and lacks the sardonic wit of the character. The rest of the cast - Patrick Allen, the pretty Barbara Parkins, Alexander Knox, Penny Casdagli and Ania Marson - play their parts well.

Good tough thriller with a smashing if somewhat protracted speedboat chase.

Best performance comes from Vladek Sheybal, who along with Anton Differing seemed to have a monopoly on playing villainous characters particularly in the 70's.