Directed by William Friedkin • 1977 • United States
Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal

William Friedkin takes Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic palm-sweater THE WAGES OF FEAR and transforms it into a blood-and-guts opera of existential delirium. The setup is familiar: four desperate men with nothing to lose—led by Roy Scheider’s on-the-lam Jersey mobster—take on a seemingly doomed mission when they agree to transport two trucks full of highly explosive nitroglycerin through the perilous South American jungle. 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.