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The Wages of Fear
Price: $29.95 Prices subject to change.
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302969443
Format: Black & White, NTSC
ISBN: 6302969441
Label: Homevision
Languages: English (Original Language), AnalogFrench (Original Language), AnalogGerman (Original Language), AnalogItalian (Original Language), AnalogRussian (Original Language), AnalogSpanish (Original Language), Analog
Manufacturer: Homevision
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Homevision
Release Date: June 13, 2000
Running Time: 148 minutes
Studio: Homevision
Theatrical Release Date: February 16, 1955
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Editorial Review:
Henri-Georges Clouzot's gripping 1953 thriller throws four men into a primal struggle against the jungle armed with modern machinery and their own nerves and endurance. The squalid, isolated South American town of Las Piedras is a veritable refuge turned prison for criminals from all over the world. When an oil fire ignites 300 miles away, dozens of desperate volunteers apply for the dangerous job of driving highly volatile nitroglycerin across rugged jungle roads--for a $2,000 payday. The bulk of the film charts the slow, grueling trek over bumpy, pothole-dotted dirt roads and worse. A dangerous cutback forces the trucks to back over a rotting wooden platform built over a cliff, a boulder in the road must be blasted away, and a river of oil (gushing from a broken pipeline) must be forded--all with one ton of explosive nitro resting in the back of each truck. The ordeal forges a tough-guy trust between German Bimba (Peter Van Eyck) and Italian Luigi (Folco Lulli) but tears apart Frenchmen Mario (Yves Montand) and Jo (Charles Vanel). Former gangland hotshot Jo finds his once-fearless exterior cracked, while Mario discovers in himself a new grit and tenacity. Clouzot's stark, simple imagery and painstaking attention to detail create a riveting tension that never lets up, intensified by the ruthless drive of Mario, who proves he will do anything--anything--to get his truck through. William Freidkin remade the film in 1977 as the stylish Sorcerer. --Sean Axmaker
Clouzot's explosive, award-winning thriller is an exercise in pure terror. Yves Montand stars as one of four desperate drifters stranded in a squalid South American town where a U.S. oil company calls all the shots. For $2,000 each, they'll risk their lives driving two truckloads of nitroglycerine 300 miles over treacherous roads.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Correction of two points.
The country is Honduras. The plane arrives from the capital, Tegucigalpa.
The ticket is a Paris Metro (subway) ticket for Place Pigalle station.
A classic suspense masterpiece. Yves Montand's second film.
Rating: - Another masterpiece by Clouzot
Now this one will get your blood flowing! Director Henri-Georges Clouzot plugs this piercing thriller against your skin and screams CLEAR!!!!!! He literally sends jolt after jolt into your brain, this movie is quite a shock to the system.
Four men desperate for money get the high-paying job they've been hoping for. There's only one problem--this job is pretty much suicide. They're asked to transport some explosives across some extremely rugged terrain in Central America.
Their journey ... Read More
Rating:  - Are we having fun, yet ?
My favorite line in it: "By the way, there are no shocks on these rigs. Our trucks don't have none of those modern conveniences."
After all, what's life but a ticket to the theatre in the Pigalle that you neither use or ever get to cash in? But you carry it with you, to hell, thru hell, and back.
Rating: - Another LOST tie in.
I rented and watched this movie becuse the two main creators of LOST mentioned it in a discussion on a podcast. They described Bimba as similar to John Locke. I agree.
This is probably one of the most suspenseful vintiage movies I have ever seen so far. Not that I have seen too many of them. Nevertheless, the movie draws you in as you get closer to the delivery that the four men are taking. Although the beginning shows why these men made their decision it is a bit slow and shows it's ... Read More
Rating: - The slow descent.
The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)
Widely considered Henri-Georges Clouzot's finest film, The Wages of Fear is the story of four poverty-stricken men hired by a rapacious oil company to transport two trucks full of nitroglycerin over three hundred miles of very bad road to an oil well fire. And for what it's worth, the film is very good at what it does; the problem, from the point of view of someone watching it over half a century after its original release, is that it would ... Read More
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