Friedkin takes Georges Arnaud’s 1950 novel Le salaire de la peur—which received its first filmic interpretation in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic palm-sweater The Wages of Fear—and transforms it into a blood-and-guts opera of existential delirium.

The ambitious story of a ragtag group led by Roy Scheider transporting big rigs full of volatile nitroglycerin across South America was an expensive flop at the time of its release, which came just a month after Star Wars. The phenomenal success of Friedkin’s prior two films — The French Connection and The Exorcist — only made the disappointment sharper.

What Friedkin brings to the table is a raw, visceral immediacy—you can practically feel the muck, sweat, and grime. As the film tilts into full-blown expressionism in its final act, a meaning for the much-puzzled-over title (a reference to the name of one of the trucks) emerges: there is an almost supernatural force of cosmic nihilism at work here. Tangerine Dream’s mesmerising electronic score only adds to the intensity.

**Please note: this is a change to the film schedule as it appears in our Nov-Dec print programme.**