If you don't expect too much from "Puppet on a Chain," you can spend an enjoyable session watching a nearly half-century-old bam- bam-wham- wham adventure movie set in beautiful Amsterdam.The story, cobbled from a book by Alaistair MacLean, once one of the most popular novelists working the global-thriller gold mine ("The Guns of Navarone," "The Satan Bug," "Ice Station Zebra,"), involves a narcotics gang working out of Holland, and the good guys bent on stopping them. If "Puppet on a Chain" has any claim to fame, it's because of its heart-pounding epochal speed-boat chase through Dutch canals. Beautifully set up, daringly acted by supremely skilled stuntmen and superbly photographed, it's one of the most exciting high-motion chase scenes in movie history.The rest of the movie involves a heavily layered story about dolls, Bibles, and ingenious ways of making the hero's life miserable and painful. Aside from the veteran American actor Alexander Knox ("Wilson") and a dependably hissable villain (Vladek Shaybel, a familiar Bond baddie, most notably the Czech chess grandmaster, "SPECTRE Number 5," in the 1963 "From Russia with Love") the acting is solidly second-rate and the undistinguished dialogue just a means of nudging the story forward. The hero, a US agent, is stolidly if unexpectedly portrayed by a Swedish actor, Sven-Bertil Taube (who was much better decades later in the Swedish film, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," as Henrick Vanger). Don't look for Bond girls here – just an assemblage of wan actresses, all looking curiously like Addams Family cousins in their dark-haired pallor, mouthing dull repartee.Good points include the aforesaid speedboat chase, beautiful cinematography in good color, Piero Piccioni's appealing score, some funny headgear, and a sometimes original look at the seamy underbelly of The Netherlands, including prostitutes, graffiti and some wildly complicated drug smuggling operations. All this doesn't stop director Geoffrey Reeve and cinematographer Jack Hildyard from having some fun, notably in photographing a) a naughty and messy floor show, and later, b) a prudish and precise folk dance – the vigilant moviegoer might enjoy comparing the two."Puppet on a Chain," for all its obvious influence on Bond movies, has somehow always hidden under the radar, and never been given its just due as a progenitor of the international thriller genre, although moviegoers have time and again been pleasantly surprised at the unpredictable morsels hidden within its bland Dutch cheese offering.

Puppet on a Chain is a tedious hard boiled Euro thriller shot in Amsterdam. It could had done with some actual American stars and some more thrilling action. By the time we get to the end speedboat chase scene the damage has been done.After a hit-man has killed some people and stole some heroin, cop Paul Sherman (Sven-Bertil Taube) is sent to Amsterdam to investigate the murders and the drugs trade. As soon as he sets foot he is being followed and his contact is killed at the airport. Sherman doggedly pursues his investigation in a city where drugs has inflicted a great deal of damage.Taube is an uncharismatic lead, the film goes at a lethargic pace, the mystery person with drug dealing nuns and who goes about dressed as a minister is easy to identify as a bad guy, it lacks thrills until the boat chase scene which then leads to a few twists but we expected those given someone tipped of the bad guys that Sherman was arriving.

Soulless, silly international co-production boasts picture postcard cinematography in Amsterdam and other locales but is too generic and clichéd otherwise to drum up much excitement. The nominal hero is as stiff and expressionless as a Ken doll, and the vaunted boat chase -- staple of the trailer and TV commercials of the time -- is technically well-executed but out of place in what was supposed to be an adaptation of MacLean's dark, complex tale of drug smuggling, murder and espionage.This is one of those many cases where producers obtained rights to a valuable property and then jettisoned 90% of what made it memorable or effective; particularly inexplicable in this case, as MacLean is listed as one of the screenwriters! A good (or bad) example of those infamous multi-national 'tax shelter' film productions of the 60's/early 70's.For better MacLean, look to THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, BREAKHEART PASS or WHERE EAGLES DARE.

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.