10 Intense Movies That Captivated The Hell Out Of You

If only one motion picture could be described as "gut-wrenching," then Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear would almost certainly take the prize.

Set in an unnamed part of South America, the plot hones in on four characters with shadowy pasts, all of them desperate to get out but lacking the financial means to make it happen. It's their lucky (or is that unlucky?) day, of course, for it's not long before they're presented with an opportunity: transport trucks filled with explosive nitroglycerine through the unforgiving terrain to an oilfield and get paid $2000.

What follows thereafter is a claustrophobic, sweat-inducing hell-ride that will shred your nerves the second our determined drivers board their trucks. The Wages of Fear is a relentlessly punishing experience and a masterpiece of dramatic tension; the levels of suspense refuse to drop for even a second, despite the film's epic 148 minute runtime. It's the cinematic equivalent of a pressure cooker, one that is sure to leave you broken into tiny pieces by the end - drained, weary, exhausted.

Watching this, it's easy to see how films like Mad Max: Fury Road have taken inspiration from Clouzot's classic, whilst William Friedkin - best known for horror masterpiece The Exorcist - actually remade the film for American audiences with his bizarrely-named Sorcerer, one of the most underrated films of the 1970s.