Leofwine_draca I thoroughly enjoyed this old-fashioned spy yarn based on a novel by Erskine Childers. The story is simplicity in itself: a quintessentially British yachtsman, Arthur Davies, is exploring off the coast of Germany when he uncovers some strange activity. He calls in his upper-crust friend, Carruthers, and the two soon find themselves out of their depth and caught up in some sinister events.Okay, so there isn't much story to go along with, and the story that there is is rather predictable. That's beside the point: RIDDLE OF THE SANDS is a strongly visual film that conveys the joys of being free on the oceans, as well as the pleasure of a world that was a lot simpler than ours. It's well-shot throughout with an infectious charm, and as the two leads, Simon MacCorkindale and Michael York have a wonderfully deadpan chemistry.The thriller and spy aspects, although relatively mundane by modern-day standards, are interspersed well with the rest of the story, and Jenny Agutter turns up as lovely as ever. There are some well-handled set-pieces dotted throughout - the atmospheric journey through the fog, the hide-out in the loft, the dinner scene - and if the film doesn't perhaps excite you as it might, then it leaves you with a warm and cosy feeling afterwards, like the effect of sitting by the dying-down remnants of a roaring fire.

pawebster It's great that someone decided to film the book. It is not an easy one to manage. Others have noted how well the sailing scenes are done. Simon MacCorkindale is excellent and convinces as an enthusiastic and athletic amateur yachtsman. Michael York is stiff and is the same as he has been elsewhere. The first half of the film is quite good.That was the good news. On the negative side, the 1970s show through too much. The men's hair is a bit too long and the beards look as if they came out of the dressing-up box.Worst of all, no attempt is made to get the German right. There are German actors, who, of course speak correctly. However, it was a disastrous move to leave undubbed the atrocious accents of the non-German actors. I could go on.In the second half of the film, we seem suddenly to be the world of the Famous Five, or, at best, an old episode of the Saint or Danger Man. The fight scenes are laughable. The baddies are awful, especially the Kaiser. How Alan Badel strayed into this farrago, I do not know.Less seriously, much of the filming was done in Holland, and it shows. Holland is not really like North Germany and we never quite get the unique atmosphere of the German Frisian islands or coastline.

ianlouisiana Mr McCorkindale - wearing the mother of all moustaches - is a keen yachtsman exploring the sands off the Friesian Islands.An archetypal Edwardian Gentleman with all the vices and virtues of his class. No apparent means of support unlike his fellow Oxford Man Mr York who is Something in the Foreign Office and rushes to his aid when he receives a telegram about some Germans not being quite "The Thing".Together they uncover a dastardly Hun plot to invade England,led by Queen Victoria's nephew. Clearly a precursor of the better known "The 39 Steps","The riddle of the sands" is as eerie as the creeping fog that regularly envelopes the Friesians,luring ships to their doom.The movie is a mixture of pastels and greys,the dockside buildings,churches,bars,a rare splash of muted colour. Mr McCorkindale's yacht is a thing of beauty indeed in this age of carbon fibre,the train clean and shiny,the waiting rooms reassuringly fugged with smoke.It is a fine evocation of an era when it was indeed the first prize in the lottery of life to be born an Englishman. Elegant and beautifully paced,one of the last of the Rank productions, "The riddle of the sands" deserves to be far better known. From the slough of despond that was 1970s British Cinema it rises and shines.

L. Denis Brown Although Erskine Childers 1903 book The Riddle of the Sands is now more than a century old, it remains for me the finest espionage novel ever written. This is no doubt partly because I was myself a yachtsman familiar with sailing among the North Sea sandbanks and mudflats, so the descriptions of dramatic battles with falling tides remain very real to me. But apart from this it is a real pleasure to read a genuine spy thriller free of the usual code breaking sequences or a plethora of violent deaths. And it must be remembered that this book is reputed to have drawn attention to an unrecognised threat to the U.K. so effectively that it led to changes in British national defence policies prior to World War I. Few other books have ever been able to point to such a dramatic significance. SPOILER AHEAD - It is amazing that this book was never filmed until 1979, and remains incredible to me that the film is still so little appreciated it has never been released in the form of a DVD. Even at the level of a travelogue, the muted colours and atmospheric rendering of the yachting scenes in the Fresian Islands make it well worth watching. Beyond this the story of two young yachtsmen who stumble on the plans being prepared for a German invasion of largely undefended stretches of low lying English coastline in East Anglia is a real thriller, and the characterisation in the film does not fall too far behind that which made the original novel so famous. The photography is also almost impeccable. The key chapter of the book "Blindfold to Memmert" describes an incredible feat of navigation with two oarsmen piloting their dinghy about 13 miles across drying sandbanks through a thick fog. A thick fog does not make for a very dramatic picture and transcribing this chapter onto celluloid as a gripping story was a remarkable feat which has not always been appreciated; but I tremble to think about what might have been produced with a less understanding Director and cameramen. Unlike many movies based on espionage novels, this film is reasonably true to the text, and still more true to the spirit, of the original book; even though the final sequences have been spiced up a little to make the film more exciting. Amazon.com still list this cracker in the form of a videotape, but it is more than time for us to be able to purchase it as a DVD.