A serial killer in the city
In the film, Amsterdam police inspector Erik Visser goes after a killer with distinctly psychopathic tendencies. None of this comes easily to Erik, until he enlists the help of a small diving club where the smart and charming Laura works.
A steering error with consequences
We already wrote it in our article about this film of the same calibre: it may be fiction, but for the filming the speedboats and cars really do tear through the city. That this can go wrong became painfully clear during the shooting of Amsterdamned. Because of a stuntman's steering error, the boat carrying him and actor Huub Stapel flew out of a bend and slammed into the quay wall at over 70 kilometres an hour, fortunately at an angle. Stapel was left with a slipped disc from the accident; had he hit the wall head-on, it could well have ended fatally. He talked about the accident himself in the AD newspaper and later in a documentary about the work of Dick Maas.
- 01There are canals aplenty in Amsterdam, yet not all the scenes were shot in the city. For the speedboat chase, among other things, the crew moved to Utrecht, and filming also took place on the Oostvoornse Meer lake near Rotterdam;
- 02The film contains several nods to other films. Documentary maker Bert Haanstra has a small cameo, and there are shots of lifts, which play the 'lead role' in another Maas film;
- 03A follow-up to this film was once planned, set not in Amsterdam but in Rotterdam. A TV series was also meant to continue the story. So far, neither has ever materialised;
- 04The film was also released in America, where it became the third best-selling film of 1988.
- 05Dick Maas has since written a book in which at least the main character returns. De Naakte Getuige (The Naked Witness) is the title of the book, which came out in 2021.
