"When a South American oil well owned by an American company catches fire, the company hires four European men, down on their luck, to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads, loaded with nitroglycerine needed to extinguish the flames." This is the plot inherent to Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear - one that you'll no doubt agree has been pre-loaded to assure the maximum amount of tension explodes on-screen. Despite its place in the Top 250, then, The Wages of Fear still isn't anywhere as well known as it should be, especially given that it contains some of the all-time greatest action sequences in cinematic history. If you're interested in movies that double as paranoid thrill rides then, here's a flick that will completely take hold of you. It was also remade as the brilliantly underrated movie, Sorcerer, in the US - which is also akin to a masterpiece.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
