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...

Looking and sounding like a cheap porno without the sex, this is the first in an impressive string of stinkers from producer (or in this case director) Geoffrey Reeve.And it's a doozy. Laughable on just about every level.Some government agents (I think) are "professionally murdered" in Amsterdam and a considerably less-than-charismatic, block-of-wood Interpol agent (who I assure you is not named Louis Salinger) is sent in to investigate by walking around a lot to ensure the tax-dodge financiers get their money's worth for the plane tickets to shoot on location.The wannabe-hard-hitting attitudes to drugs and depiction of prostitution must have looked laughably outdated even before the celluloid dried, but the script at least is very obliging in that it explains exactly what's happening regularly in horribly contrived direlogue ("Were you followed? Oh no of course not. No one outside Washington even knows you're here!") yet despite this the plot somehow remains confusing. By the time a sinister Vladimir Putin lookalike Priest (no less than Kronsteen from From Russia with Love) swaggers up to his pulpit to deliver a sermon your brain will have switched off, which is unfortunate because you'll miss our hero - pinned to the ground during a fight - struggling to reach for a plank of wood only to later realise he is in fact sitting on a loaded pistol, and him shouting "You bastaaaard!" at his friend's murdered corpse, and the leather-bound, moustachioed go-go boys, the morris dancing and the hilarious torture sequence - all of which provide ample laughs. Only the climactic boat chase impresses. It's an exciting, well-directed sequence that really has no place in this movie. Such a glaring anomaly is explained when the credits roll - Reeve had nothing to do with that sequence! Thankfully everything goes back to business as usual for the ridiculous, spit-out-your-drink twist and warehouse shootout.Unless such a wretched thing as a Geoffrey Reeve completist exists - and you're one of them - I wouldn't bother with this instantly forgettable nonsense.

I think the comments made by the gentleman above me are a bit harsh. I received this film in DVD format for my birthday because I am a keen Vladek Sheybal fan.Please be aware I am going to give away spoilers so maybe read this after you have viewed the film, thanks!Ok, this film was made in 1970. Some of the special effects are a bit naff (eg, the back projection) and those dancers in the bar leave me in hysterics but I think the story-line holds up very well. I was rivetted and I certainly enjoyed the twist in the tale. I am still captivated by the enigmatic nuns in their fish-net tights and make-up and as for Mr Sheybal's character, Meergeren, I would love to know just what other dastardly things he go up to. I still wonder how he got mixed up in using a church and parading around as a priest. My mind still boggles. I also enjoyed the boat chase scene through the canals in Amsterdam. That was very well done and is probably more exciting than the swamp chase in Live and Let Die.I do take the former comments to heart about the book being much darker in tone. I look forward to reading it and, hopefully, I will get more of an insight to the Meergeren character. But if you like movies from the early '70's then time you will certainly enjoy it.

Why - with the notable exceptions of 'Where Eagles Dare' and 'The Guns of Naverone' - are most films of McClean books so bad?I can only assume that Alistair didn't really care about how the films turned out, because for some reason the producers manage to cut out all the best bits of his books. They did it with 'Ice Station Zebra' and they do it here. They turn one of his darkest and most brutal thrillers into a slow and uninvolving 'action' film. The ominous and sinister Island of drug smugglers totally lacks suspense, and the removal of the scene where the girl is pitchforked (one of the most disturbing and frightening scenes I've ever read) is inexplicable.The guy playing Sherman has all the charisma of Al Gore, and as for the famous boat chase, it is woefull compared with 'Live and let die' or 'Face/Off'.In short, read the book, which is much more exciting, and imagine how good this film could have been.