Adicionar um enredo no seu idiomaFollowing a triple professional hit a U.S. agent arrives in Amsterdam to investigate a heroin smuggling ring. He finds a city rife with drugs and a police force unable or unwilling to do muc... Ler tudoFollowing a triple professional hit a U.S. agent arrives in Amsterdam to investigate a heroin smuggling ring. He finds a city rife with drugs and a police force unable or unwilling to do much about it. With his incognito female fellow agent the American is soon stirring things up... Ler tudoFollowing a triple professional hit a U.S. agent arrives in Amsterdam to investigate a heroin smuggling ring. He finds a city rife with drugs and a police force unable or unwilling to do much about it. With his incognito female fellow agent the American is soon stirring things up.
- Direção
- Roteiristas
- Artistas
- Herta
- (as Henni Orri)
- George Lemay
- (as Stewart Lane)
- Bell Boy
- (não creditado)
- Thug
- (não creditado)
- Thug
- (não creditado)
- Coroner
- (não creditado)
- Barge-hold henchman
- (não creditado)
Avaliações em destaque
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!
It starts arrestingly with a callous triple murder with the killer casually and noiselessly walking into a house and silently executing his three defenceless victims and follows it up with another surprise murder at Amsterdam airport, this time of an Interpol agent meeting up with a colleague. Said colleague is the film's principal man-hunter, played with Scandinavian stoicism (although he's supposed to be American), by Sven-Bertl Taube, who accompanied by his English, female contact in the city, former lover (as we learn) Barbara Parkins, tracks his quarry to a ruthless drug-smuggling ring, whose base appears to be of all things a monastery, which sidelines in manufacturing and dispensing toy dolls and bibles for the tourist trade, but which secretly contain packages of heroin. This gang thinks nothing of executing suspected informants or suspicious investigators and signifies their deaths with a symbolic "puppet on a chain", one of the toy dolls hung by a chain.
Being Alistair McLean, there's a major plot twist at the end when the gang-leaders are revealed which I admit I didn't see coming for once, itself following on from the aforementioned hair-raising pursuit through the waterways as Taube a chases the baddie more for personal revenge than for the ends of justice.
Like I said, there was a lot to like about this movie. The direction, although shared, I found to be pacy and engrossing, the acting above average, besides Taube and Parkins, I enjoyed seeing Mr "Voice of a thousand adverts", Patrick Allen in a cinema role for once and who ironically for a man famous for extolling the benefits of newly-built houses in the U.K. from a helicopter, finds himself in a life or death situation outside a building where a chopper might have been of benefit to him.
Sure the fashions, a cheesy disco sequence and an intrusive Euro-electric soundtrack date it somewhat but this on the whole was a gritty, low-key thriller which I really enjoyed. And trust me, I'm not yanking your chain when I say that.
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!
Você sabia?
- CuriosidadesThis movie was made and released about two years after its source novel of the same name by Alistair MacLean was first published in 1969. 'Puppet on a Chain' was MacLean's fourteenth novel and this movie was the seventh film adaptation of one of MacLean's stories.
- Erros de gravaçãoAt one point during the Amsterdam boat chase, the white boat hits a bridge and sustains fairly severe damage to the prow (which is acknowledged in the sound effects). In the next shot, the boat is unblemished again.
- Citações
Maggie: Paul, what are you thinking?
Paul Sherman: I was thinking about my ex-wife, as a matter of fact.
Maggie: What was she like?
Paul Sherman: Very affectionate... with other men. My fault - I was never there.
- Versões alternativasSome topless nudity and shots of a man's bloody face during a hotel fight was cut from the film for an 'AA' rating (suitable for persons of 14 and over) for the UK cinema release though this was restored in video releases and TV showings.
- ConexõesReferenced in The Alf Garnett Saga (1972)
Principais escolhas
- How long is Puppet on a Chain?Fornecido pela Alexa
Detalhes
- Data de lançamento
- País de origem
- Idioma
- Também conhecido como
- Puppet on a Chain
- Locações de filme
- Kasteel Muiderslot - Herengracht 1, Muiden, Noord-Holland, Países Baixos(the castle in the film)
- Empresa de produção
- Consulte mais créditos da empresa na IMDbPro
Bilheteria
- Faturamento bruto nos EUA e Canadá
- US$ 769.462
- Tempo de duração1 hora 38 minutos
- Mixagem de som
- Proporção
- 1.85 : 1