June 24 1977 

SORCERER, William Friedkin's bravura remake of Henri-Georges Clouzet's 1953 classic The Wages of Fear, opens in LA. Adapted by Walon Green, from Georges Arnaud's 1950 novel Le Salaire de La Peur, Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal and Amidou star as four, unknown to each other fugitives from justice who team up to deliver two truckloads of highly unstable nitroglycerine to a burning oil rig  some 200 miles deep in the roadless South American jungle. Though it is a  box-office failure, over the years, ongoing repertory screenings, film festival tributes and DVD releases successfully serve  to reposition the film as a cult classic every bit as white-knuckle thrilling as Clouzet's original. 

 

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