Crew
Director/Screenplay/Music – Dick Maas, Producers – Peter De Maegd, Dick Maas, Huub Stapel, Diede In ‘T Veld & Edward Van ‘T Wout, Photography – Danny Elsen, Visual Effects – The Pack Flanders (Supervisor – Miguel Guerrero), Makeup Effects – Rob’s Prop Shop (Erik Hillenbrink & Rob Hillenbrink), Production Design – Jan Rutgers. Production Company – Potemkino/Guess Who?/Parachute Pictures/2CFilm.
Cast
Huub Stapel (Eric Visser), Holly Mae Brood (Tara Lee), Pieter Van De Sman (Koos Van Amstel), Ruben Brinkman (Dickie Van Dongen), Steef Van Cuijpers (Mick Van den Berg), Tatum Dagelet (Anneke Visser), Dunya Khayame (Helga Liebermann), Bas Keijzer (Josef Vizbeen), Pieternel Bollman (Dragana Jankovic), Patrick Stoof (Dolly Double Dutch), Mattijn Hartemink (Major General), Lesley Grant (Female Tourist), Vaughn Johseph (Male Tourist), Arian Foppen (Unfortunate Lawyer)
Plot
Amsterdam is terrorised by a series of murders where victims are preyed upon by someone who lurks in the canals, emerging to conduct a series of sensationalistic attacks. Investigating detective Tara Lee is told by her captain Koos Van Amstel how this has the same hallmarks of the series of killings that occurred in the 1980s. Eric Visser, the original investigating detective, is now living in retirement and is called back to Amsterdam to advise. At the same time, Koos informs Eric that DNA has ruled out Armand Sluiter, the man they were certain was the killer back then. Despite his advisory only role, Eric and Tara join forces to track the new killer.
Amsterdamned (1988) was an action/detective thriller made by Dutch director Dick Maas. The plot featured Huub Stapel as a detective hunting a serial killer who prowls the canals of Amsterdam as a frogman, emerging to snatch victims. Maas can be a fairly middle of the road director (see below for his other credits), but I would cite Amsterdamned with its chases through the streets and canals among some of the best action sequences of the 1980s.
Amsterdamned II comes out at what feels like the point that most writers/directors reach where they have coasted along on one or more hits and then find they are not having the successes they once had and so start recycling their previous hits. I once called it the Arthur C. Clarke Syndrome where Clarke had a number of hits throughout the 1950s-70s but then spent the 1980s onwards churning out sequels to the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Rendezvous with Rama (1975). Even a superstar like Tom Cruise has started feeling the pinch and these days has retreated to the safety of churning out more works concentrated on audience-familiar IPs rather than new and original material. Expect any day now for Dick Maas to come out with a The Lift II.
Amsterdamned II brings back Maas and a 71-year-old Huub Stapel (as well as Tatum Dagelet who played in his teenage daughter in the original and is now old enough to be portrayed as a mother with her own child). Now there is an entire plot that drives the film about Huub Stapel having retired, feeling old and irrelevant and only too eager to get back into the game. In order to have a repeat of the scenario in the first film, the new script comes up with a somewhat improbable scenario involving the original killer being found to be the wrong man and then having his family members turn up. (Although one of the big plot holes of Amsterdamned II is that having revealed that Armand Sluiter, the killer from the original was the wrong man, it never lets us in on who the real killer was).
Maas sets up similar kinds of action sequences that we have in the original. The opening scene is an attention-grabbing one where two tourists (Lesley Grant and Vaughn Johseph) are schmoozing on a canal boat as the man and pilot are abruptly snatched overboard, the woman panics as the hull is pierced and the boat starts sinking, leaving her clinging to a cable on the underside of a bridge. In the subsequent scene, their two bodies are placed on a paddle boat and sent towards a tourist boat and then abruptly lit on fire.
Maas creates some other standout set-pieces – in one sequence, a lawyer gets into a small two-seater Biro car with a woman he has picked up only to be dragged over the edge and into the canal, followed by wild images of him trying to shoot bullets through the window at the approaching frogman. The big set-piece is another boat chase through the canals. Realising that the 71 year old Huub Stapel may not be for up the action, this has him paired with the younger Holly Mae Brood who hangs on the outside of the speedboat as the killer races through the canal doing donuts and scraping the canal side in an effort to shake her off, while Huub does hold his own up by chasing after on a motorcycle and then a jetbike where we get spectacular scenes with the speedboat leaping over the jetbike and then crashing up on a jetty, all before Huub corners the killer on a rooftop and they set themselves on fire. Maas also gives an entertainingly improbable climactic sequence with the Dutch equivalent of the Navy SEALs cornering the killer in a lock, only for the killer to turn the tables and progressively eliminate them.
Dick Maas first appeared with The Lift (1983) about a killer elevator. His next film Flodder (1986), a comedy about a crude and rude family that move into a posh neighbourhood, was a domestic hit and produced several sequels. Maas made several subsequent English language works with episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-3) and the films Do Not Disturb (1999), a thriller set in Amsterdam, and then The Shaft (2001),, an English-language remake of The Lift. Returning to the Dutch language, Maas made the comedy Killer Babes (2007), the horror film Saint (2010), the thriller Quiz (2012) and the killer lion film Prey (2016).
Trailer here