DVDMovies

"Fear" is a man's best friend

By June 12, 2009No Comments
WOF #5

The recent Blu-ray release of Clouzot’s ever-great The Wages of Fear prompts some pink­ish mus­ings on the film and its con­tem­por­ary con­text, over at The Auteurs’.

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No Comments

  • Eric says:
    June 12, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    I had nev­er seen this film until recently. I don’t have a Blu-Ray play­er, but the stand­ard def DVD was still magnificent.

  • Dan says:
    June 12, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    Ah, “The Wages of Fear”, both a great thrill­er and vic­tim of one of the worst remakes ever made.

  • DVertino says:
    June 12, 2009 at 5:56 pm

    Aaaah.. anoth­er chance to piss on Friedkin. I love it.

  • Mike says:
    June 13, 2009 at 12:38 am

    I respect­fully dis­agree, Dan. “Sorcerer”, by repla­cing Yves Montand’s “Dean Martin of the jungle” swag­ger with Roy Scheider’s hol­lowed determ­in­a­tion, Friedkin sends his remake one step bey­ond, wrap­ping it up in the gri­mi­est of pat­inas. The Tangerine Dream score still pulsates, the moon crater sur­faces still haunt, and the bridge storm sequence is a still a doozy.

  • Tom Russell says:
    June 13, 2009 at 1:01 am

    Have to dis­agree respect­fully with both Dan (it’s far one of the worst remakes ever made) and Mike (it ain’t that great, either).
    While I’m a big fan of Scheider (may he rest in peace) and that haunt­ing, lovely, goosepimpling score by Tangerine Dream, I’d have to say for my money that “Wages” is still the much, much, much bet­ter film and that none of the sequences in “Sorcerer” can even begin to com­pete with any of those in “Wages”.
    Of course, I’m res­ol­utely not a Friedkin fan while I’m pos­it­ively ga-ga for Clouzot.

  • JC says:
    June 13, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    So, when’s Criterion going to give a Blu-ray/DVD re-issue to Diabolique? The ori­gin­al release is…certainly not one of their best transfers.

  • Dan says:
    June 14, 2009 at 8:42 am

    I’m not tak­ing an oppor­tun­ity to piss on Friedkin; if I really wanted to do that, I’ve got bet­ter tar­gets than “Sorceror”, but, hey, the guy can still make a good movie, God bless him (yes, I liked “Bug” quite a bit).
    I dis­like “Sorceror” because I think it’s by and large a missed oppor­tun­ity. Schneider is great (he works hard enough for it, it’s hard for me not to feel Friedkin had left him adrift), and the score is great, sep­ar­ate from the film, but that’s where the great­ness ends. It’s just kind of awk­ward and com­pletely lack­ing in sus­pense when it’s not being cheesy (a rope bridge? You maybe also want to throw in some hos­tile nat­ives? Oh wait, you had those too). It’s kind of like the Hollywood remake of “The Vanishing”, the remake should have been a chip shot and they STILL screwed it up.