Puppet on a Chain

As usual, Alistair MacLean has written a great thriller which doesn't quite fit into the screen, (the only one that did was "The Guns of Navarone",) but here at least they are trying their best, and Sven-Bertil Taube always did a good job in films, especially as wounded soldiers. His complete lack of expression he actually manages to make quite expressive.

This is a particularly grim story, as all heroin films and stories are, and the case of the girl with the dolls is quite hair-rising in its horror dressed up in heart-rending innocence. This must be the most appallingly cruel way described in films of managing heroin traffic. It is too shocking not to be true – you really get the insight of how the dealers will stop at nothing, and the more intricate the contrivance to get it through the better, to manage this dirtiest of business. The hanging business mercilessly adds to the mounting horror of the intrigue. As usual in MacLean features, many die, and usually you don't object, since it's normally the villains who get what they deserve, but here it is different. The only softening pillow to the constant hard fall of the grim tale is that you never see the last hanging body.

The wild goose chase on water has been made very much about, while all they actually do is going round and around each other, the only point of which is that it can't last forever. But this priest villain is one of MacLean's most revolting ones.

On the whole, it's a thriller well worth seeing and remembering for its shocking story, – the risk is you will remain shocked for days, – with its vile and unfortunate characters, but most of all for the excellent sight-seeing of Amsterdam both from above and from below.