Bonecas Acorrentadas

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...

Wow Paul Sherman is one badass secret agent . Look what he does to that man in the hotel bedroom , he`s someone who takes no prisoners and makes James Bond look like a total wimp . But that`s the problem with PUPPET ON A CHAIN , Sven Bertil Taube is no Sean Connery and lacks the presence needed to convincingly play a ruthless secret agent . I also found it strange that if the story is set in Holland that nearly everyone speaks with either an American or British accent except for Paul Sherman who`s supposed to be American but has a noticable European accent . Still this is a fairly good , though slightly dumb thriller which does feature go go dancers . How many Bond films can claim that ?

The speedboat chase in the Amsterdam canals in this film is actually being copied by Dutch director Dick Maas in his 1988 film 'Amsterdamned'. I always thought how original it was to have such an out of the ordinary, yet in Amsterdam obvious chase, but apparently it is less original as I thought. In the 18 year older 'Puppet on a Chain' the chase is as vivid and dynamic as in Maas' film, although one detail in Amsterdamned should catch the viewer's attention. Just like in Puppet on a Chain, the villain almost crashes his boat into an oncoming barge, a thrilling moment. In 'Amsterdamned' this barge has a fanfare band, conducted by 'actor', and Holland's famous Oscar-winning documentary director Bert Haanstra. It makes the already exhilarating scene more colourful, and provides it with a light touch. This detail encapsulates an often noticeable and important difference between English and Dutch film-making if you ask me; It seems that in Dutch films a doses of ridiculing of a serious action or scene is indispensable. Fact of the matter is that the 'original' film, Puppet on a Chain, is more believable because of its absence of this ridiculing. I also find it very interesting to see sceneries of my home country (Holland) in such a serious crime intrigue, where BTW everybody speaks British English!

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.