"The Exorcist" still had the film business under its spell in the mid-'70s when its director, William Friedkin, decided to remake a French action film for his next project. The studio thought "Sorcerer" would be a swell title -- even though it had nothing to do with the tale told in the original "The Wages of Fear."
Friedkin, who knew a thing or two about action films, cranked out a rousing thriller with then-red-hot Roy Scheider. Tangerine Dream provided the creepy music. The eerie trailer was a classic. Thud. The movie was quickly forgotten.
"Sorcerer
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a man ahead of his time. With "The Wages of Fear
In 1951, Clouzot abandoned the comfy soundstages of Paris, marching his cast and crew into the rocky hills of southern France. There, his craftsmen built a poverty-infested Latin American village and an oil-drilling outpost as the grim settings for "Fear."
When Clouzot called "action," he wasn't kidding: The crew dynamited boulders, rolled trucks off a cliff, risked their lives driving atop a decrepit bridge, rode horses into a gasoline fireball and endured the fits of rage for which their director was notorious.
"It was an army operation," his assistant director recalls. "It wasn't just a filming." Production dragged out over two years because of a flood that swept away the sets and funding that ran dry.
Clouzot and company were rewarded with a rue-buster, a hit that dominated the French boxoffice for several years. In Cannes, the film took the Palme d'Or.
Things turned ugly in the States, though, because of the movie's perceived anti-American tone. Time magazine called "Fear" one of the "most evil" movies ever made.
The Criterion Collection released the film back in 1999, and again a few years ago. That double-disc DVD set
Read the full "The Wages of Fear" DVD review.
* About "Deja Vu reviews": As in, didn't I read that before ... hmm.
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