EDITORS NOTE: Amsterdamned (1988) – Every once in a great while, the gods of the Internet bestow upon Malevolent Dark an unexpected gift. This morning I awoke to carefully packaged (poorly formatted) brown paper parcel (email) sent via a caravan of desert wandering hashish merchants (AT&T) from Welsh writer Dave Franklin. This is the second time Dave has given us a little sample from his on-going series of Ice Dog Movie Guides. This review covers a doozy of a film that covers the gambit from cryptozoological mirth to SCUBA laden mayhem.
We highly recommend that you take look at Dave Franklin’s other work in this series. You will be hard pressed find a more concise and in your face opinion on the most interesting gems in all of filmdom.
This excerpt comes from Dave’s latest release of the Ice Dog Movie Review series:
If you like what you see here, make sure you pick up. I ensure that your $3.99 will be well spent. While your at it, here are links to the rest of his Ice Dog Movie Review volumes.
I’ve seen some whacked-out slasher flicks, but this Dutch effort is so inspired that it always tickles my twisted little heart.
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Director: Dick Maas
Cast: Huub Stapel, Monique van de Ven, Serge-Henri Valcke, Tanneke Hartzuiker, Wim Zomer
Synopsis: The Netherlands gives us its spin on the Loch Ness Monster.
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Holland is famous for tulips, clogs, Edam cheese, red light districts, canals, Rembrandt, Golden Earring, hash cafes and windmills, as well as talented soccer teams that can’t quite win the World Cup. Oh yeah, and being hopeless at repelling Nazis. Which one do you think a serial killer takes advantage of to carry out his grisly trade?
Well, the mention of Nessie should have tipped you off. Yes, that’s right, Amsterdamned focuses on a wetsuit-clad murderer stalking the canals, a man who strikes during both night and day, and doesn’t care whether his victims are alone or in pairs. He’ll attack them in their boats, come lunging out of the water to pull them in, and even do the odd impression of the great white in Jaws.
What a nutter. What a film.
Maas’ first effort The Lift (in which a killer elevator went about its bloody business) was too stupid to persevere with, but five years later he managed to balance horror and outlandishness to near-perfection. He’s smart enough to give an aerial view of the small city early on to show how its sixteen kilometers of canals deeply penetrate and crisscross it. This adds a nice touch of orientation and plausibility, especially given the murky water would effectively camouflage a departing killer. Yet nothing really prepares you for the sheer level of imagination demonstrated during the first slaying.
Straightaway Maas puts us in the killer’s point of view, an effective device that firstly introduces his Darth Vader-like breathing before enabling him to scope out potential victims along the waterside and pop out of sight at will. Now I’m not sure how you creep up on a hooker wearing a dripping wetsuit, oxygen tanks and presumably flippers, but I’ll let that slide. Suffice to say, she’s no match for his butcher’s knife and the element of surprise, resulting in her being dragged into the water as if her assailant is some sort of upright crocodile.
So far, so good, but it’s the next scene that giddily suggests Maas’ grasp of the material is unusually inventive. The next morning he places us in a glass-topped tourist boat, the sort with a live commentary from a dolly bird down the front churning out facts, stats and the odd rehearsed joke. The chattering boy scouts onboard are happy, as is a more reserved pair of nuns. The sunlight-drenched boat then smacks into the hooker’s upside-down body hanging from a small bridge, ensuring her carcass leaves a bloody trail as it drags along the top of the see-through roof. Nuns crossing themselves at such an unholy sight? Check. Traumatized, screaming children? Check. Me thinks Dario Argento would have been proud of such rip-roaring excess.
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Watch Amsterdamned (1988)
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Enter Eric Visser (Stapel), a bearded, hardboiled cop assigned to the case despite his slightly unorthodox methods. It’s not hard to tell he thinks the world doesn’t quite understand or appreciate his philosophy and crime-fighting efforts. On the way to the murder scene he sees a knife-wielding crim holding up a bakery. Dirty Harry-style, he doesn’t bother reporting it or waiting for backup. He prefers to jump out of his car, disarm the robber, and push the guy’s face into a large cream cake. Instead of saying thanks, the bakery owners want to know who is going to pay for the spoiled goods.
And so in just a few short scenes you have Maas’ lively approach – good kills and a pronounced sense of humor – that he keeps up for a hundred and five minutes. Amsterdamned is no horror comedy, though. It prefers to treat the atmospheric murders seriously while intending to make you laugh whenever the killer is off-screen.
Meanwhile, Eric has made it to the crime scene to find his only witness is an old bag lady. She tells him the hooker’s killer was a ‘big black monster with huge claws and feet’. It’s not much of a description to go on. Then the murders escalate and suddenly four people get offed in four days. The river police are out of their depth and start shooting ducks. The mayor wants an arrest yesterday, scared that all those cash-stuffed tourists might be put off by an epidemic of slaughter. Eric’s list of witnesses, however, has only grown to include ‘a few fish’.
Any sensible analysis of Amsterdamned would be able to pick a plethora of faults, such as the killer’s supernatural/ninja-like ability to come and go as he pleases or spirit away victims without even making a splash. Eric’s spunky teen daughter should have also been edited out as her feeble storyline goes nowhere. However, the well-paced Amsterdamned is such fun that you go along with it, especially as Maas seamlessly introduces suspects, avoids slasher clichés, and makes excellent use of the watery city and its narrow, mazy streets. Nice directorial touches abound. The acting is fine, the score not bad. Spotting the homages to Jaws (and Nancy’s bath-time doze in A Nightmare on Elm Street) are enjoyable. Christ, at one point I think Maas even riffs on the sewer chase in The Third Man. Whatever the case, Amsterdamned’s stupendous speed boat chase most definitely belongs in a Roger Moore-era Bond outing.
In a nutshell, this is an unusual horror flick that’s neither pure slasher, gorefest or horror comedy. It’s more like a combination of action, suspense, slapstick, drama, comedy, horror, romance and mystery. It’s OTT, but plays things straight rather than camply. Indeed, it chucks in a bit of everything, somehow managing to get away with just about all of its bold, creative and unpredictable moves.
If only Maas had remembered to include some naked, jiggling breasts alongside the severed head and bitten penis he managed to fit in, Amsterdamned would have been close to watertight entertainment.
Dave Franklin writes about horror a lot in his scattershot, politically incorrect six-part movie guide.