In Praise of Vladek Sheybal

Vladek Sheybal is one of the greatest screen villains from that golden age of 60s and 70s thrillers set in Europe during a grey morning frost, or evening of cobble stone streets and Citroens. I think here of The Odessa File and most famously The Day of the Jackal. I don't know why films of this era make me feel so curiously happy (I tingle like when I smell snow) - perhaps it is a simple childhood reflex, as I was born in '66.

More to the point, Sheybal was Kronsteen in From Russia With Love - and a truly sociopathic heroin-dealer/clock fetishist/ chain-killer in Puppet On A Chain (1970).

Puppet On A Chain - which is on DVD - is one of the grittiest and most entertaining of those 70s films with the porn-style soundtrack - and seems dubbed by actors with slightly Dutch accents. It is very entertaining, if you, like me, are a fan of all things retro. It has the flavour of an Avengers episode, but is more dark and violent than the Bonds that had preceded (and influenced) it.

The scene where the female protagonist is strung up like the title says is truly chilling, and Sheybal's drug-jaded explanation of why he has killed the women in the film is one of the most disturbing psycho-scenes in cinema from the period (and worthy of Polanski, also from Poland and with a similarly fraught childhood). The motorboat chase sequence through the canals of Amsterdam is superb, and unjustly forgotten.

Sheybal - dressed in a white suit and flamboyant hat - engages in a truly uncanny cat-and-mouse game involving a shotgun at the end - a haunting sequence within a sequence that is so still after the water and the racing motors. You can see how the directors of the recent homages to this era, The Bourne films with Matt Damon, have learned from this sort of imagery - how the films have to catch that early-morning European frost in the air, and the neo-modern chrome of the airports, and the whine of French police sirens: it is a recipe for a mood like no other if done properly.

I am not sure why the Alistair MacLean thrillers have not been properly assembled and sold to us as a collector's set (Fear Is The Key, and Bear Island, along with the Anthony Hopkins actioner - also a 70s classic - When Eight Bells Toll - would all be great items to rediscover for an age that enjoys schlock and camp).

Why is Sheybal so little praised now?

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