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...
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...