25 Best Movies From The 1950s

21. The Wages Of Fear

The Film: Director Henri-Georges Clouzot€™s nail-biting adaptation of Georges Arnaud€™s novel saw a group of European long haulers being given the task of a lifetime by an American oil company: man a convoy of rigs across hazardous terrain in order to extinguish a burning oil well. Oh, and said trucks are loaded with uber flammable nitroglycerin. The setup is an absolute doozie and across this movie€™s running time the staple format of the disaster picture was formed. Given the success of this movie, Clouzot went on to land the gig of directing Les Diaboliques, which didn€™t quite make the list. Classic Moment: The film€™s climactic sting in the tail, where Mario€™s luck sadly runs out, lends a dour ending to a picture not content with offering anything but some true grit to proceedings.
Contributor
Contributor

Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing. He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.