Puppet on a Chain

At the start of this, I did wonder what on earth was going on. Sven-Bertil Taube (a sort of Jon Voight lookalike) was an odd choice to lead. Hardly an household name, quite possibly not even in his native Sweden. Anyway, he arrives in Amsterdam where he doesn't even make it out of the airport before ... the bodies start dropping. Turns out that he is there to put a stop to a lucrative cocaine smuggling operation feeding the USA. He is not exactly flavour of the month with local police chief "De Graaf" (Alexander Knox), and so must do most of his investigating with the aid only of his friend "Astrid Lemay" (Ania Marson). A dastardly priest; garish gingham dolls, way too much dodgy flute music and a secret kingpin all lie in his path as he tries to thwart this successful industry. There is quite a fun motor boat chase giving a scale of just how the canals in the city interlink, but that ends rather unspectacularly - as, indeed, does the whole thing. It's made up of C-list "James Bond" types, and though there are a few quips in Alistair Maclean's self-adapted dialogue, this adventure is just a really weak and dated operation all round. read more