I'm not used to hearing Dutch so that was a bit different. The plot moves along well and the ensemble acting is well done/ I liked seeing all the different places in Amsterdam. Since it has become a place of pilgrimage for people into drugs and prostitution in recent years you generally don't see or hear much about the place at all up to and including movies from there. This film was a rarity in that sense that it captures the city before it 'went to the dogs' is how most people would put it. Several unexpected twists keep you hanging and keep you interested. More for people who can appreciate a good yearn rather than your typical action movie fan, since its not really an action movie. Good cinematography helps the project work well as a whole. Worth seeing.

A mysterious diver hiding in Amsterdam's canal system embarks on a rampage of gruesome murders. Terrifying city officials and leaving few clues for the city's best detective, who doesn't suspect that both his new girlfriend and twelve-year-old daughter may be closer than he is to finding the killer..An absolute hoot from beginning to end, the fact that this film is so full of humour, despite the bad script, makes this a curious watch.It's a typical eighties film, we start with the hero, sporting a hangover and a mullet whilst in the bath, getting alerted to the first murder, only to apprehend a robber in the bakery and then giving a payoff one-liner.He finds the first body, gives a one-liner and starts his investigation proper. We are given a few red herrings along the way as to who the murderer is, but the story and the narrative, make it a little hard to understand what is going on.It's part slasher, part horror, part crime, part comedy, and it all works in a random way.The cast are good, but a lot of the support tend to overact, and the main speed boat chase isn't just the longest one in history, it's the single funniest action set piece i have ever seen.Throw in a random sex scene, with some extremely questionable noise coming from the fairer of the two, Riffs on Jaws and Friday the 13th, then you have one weird entertaining film.It's the best Dutch film about a disfigured deep sea diving killer in the world ever.

The speedboat chase in the Amsterdam canals in this film is actually being done before in the 1970 film 'Puppet on a Chain'. 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. However, Amsterdamned is entertaining, mainly due to the over the top ridiculing of scenes. Take for example the typically Amsterdam scene of a police car crashing into a barrel organ, upon which the owner, with absolutely no respect for authority, starts to swear and scold at the police officer, calling him a "Eikel" (dickhead)! It is Amsterdam in a nutshell.

I am actually on one of the takes of this movie, the bit where the speedboat launches off the half-submerged house boat. If that take had ended up in the finished product, I might have given this film two stars. So, what's wrong with it? Well, the film might have many redeeming features (any film featuring Turkish Delight's Monique vd Ven can't be all bad), and to be sure, some of the camera-work hovering over the Amsterdam canals (although some of these were shot in Utrecht) is very atmospheric, but all is undone by the deus ex vacuum ending. The story, or maybe I should say premise, is that there is a killer lurking in the Amsterdam (see caveat above) canals. Eric Visser (whose name is a pun: it means fisherman) is the police detective charged with finding him, or her, or it (we can't tell, since the killer wears full scuba gear). The film goes through all the usual twists and turns, in order to make you first think and then doubt that X, Y or Z is the killer. But, huge spoiler and even bigger undoing, guess what? The killer, when he is finally unmasked, is someone who wasn't ever in the movie. Haha, had you fooled! It's like a Scooby Doo episode where they tear off the face mask, to find it out it was you. And you had no recollection of featuring in a Scooby Doo episode. I had seen the film in the original Dutch version, anxiously looking if I was in it, and when I lived in the States I convinced some of my friend to rent this movie. I kept a straight face when I told them just how good it was. I guess it was my way of vindicating myself for having had to sit through this movie in the first place. What made the film even worse, was that they used the original cast, some of whom had obviously never spoken a word of English before, and were obviously reading off phonetic cue cards, for the dub, except, wait for it, a young boy, whose English must've been really bad considering the other performances that were left in. HE was dubbed by an English actor with a very deep gravelly voice. Oh, and the title must be the worst pun in the name of a movie ever. To paraphrase the title track - I'll be damned damned damned before I ever again watch Amsterdamned.