SORCERER

SORCERER belongs alongside Werner Herzog’s FITZCARRALDO and Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW in the annals of ambitious films who descended into production hell. Remote jungle locations. Escalating costs. Illness. You get the drift. It's a miracle this thing ever got made, let alone completed. 

Friedkin had already made THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST. He had the big box-office reputation and the studio backing to attempt something enormous. What followed became the most difficult production of his career. Crew members suffered from malaria and food poisoning. A river dried up beneath the suspension bridge built for the film’s most demanding sequence. They dismantled the bridge and rebuilt it in Mexico.

Coppola and Herzog’s films became celebrated examples of what could emerge from that kind of ordeal. SORCERER spent years being discussed as an expensive failure. Released shortly after STAR WARS, it struggled to find an audience. Admittedly, STAR WARS is a hard act to follow, but what's harder to understand is the critical beating it took. How anyone watched it and failed to recognise what Friedkin had achieved makes zero sense to me.

The plot is simple enough, and that's partly what makes it so good. Four fugitives stranded in a remote Latin American town accept a job transporting dangerously unstable explosives. The money offers a chance to escape. Getting it means driving two battered trucks through the jungle. The slightest jolt and their whole cargo could go KABOOM along with them in it.

Roy Scheider leads a cast of men who look exhausted before the journey even starts. Friedkin makes every slipping tyre and shifting crate matter. By the time the trucks reach that suspension bridge, you understand exactly why the production went to such lengths. Tangerine Dream’s electronic score makes the ordeal even more unnerving.

This is an all-time banger, and its eventual recognition as a classic was overdue. Friedkin himself regarded SORCERER as his favourite of all the films he made. Coming from the director of THE EXORCIST, that should tell you something.