In the 1970s, director William Friedkin made three great movies, one after the other. The first, The French Connection won the Academy Award for best picture. The second, The Exorcist, was not only one of the greatest horror films of all time, but one of the highest grossing films ever.
However, his third film, Sorcerer, a remake of the French film The Wages of Fear, sank like a stone at the box office, despite having one of tensest action sequences ever filmed:
It also doesn’t help that the film was later butchered for the international market.
The film has long been champion by many (including Roger Ebert) as a lost classic. But the film was never released on Blu-Ray.
The Blu-Ray version is the full film, restored and remastered with Friedkin’s oversight, and is reportedly “stunning”.
I’ll definitely pick this up, because even on VHS (kids, ask your parents what a VHS was), it was an extremely well-made and gripping film (and one I prefer to the original Wages of Fear).
Warning: Don’t pick up the DVD released the same day as the Blu-Ray, which is reportedly a “botched” full-screen transfer, as the restored version of the DVD isn’t available yet.