Friedkin’s Masterpiece ‘Sorcerer’ Joins The Criterion Collection

Sorcerer seemed like a sure thing, a guaranteed box office hit. Two of director William Friedkin’s previous films (The French Connection and The Exorcist) received eighteen Oscar nominations, winning seven including Best Picture for The French Connection. The Exorcist shattered box office records for a horror film, grossing $ 193 million on a $ 12 million budget. It has since grossed over $ 440 million after numerous theatrical re-releases. Throw in Roy Scheider (Chief Brody from Jaws), the leading man in the highest grossing film of all-time (as of 1975), and you have a recipe for a blockbuster hit.

Yet upon its release on June 24, 1977, Sorcerer grossed less that $ 13,000 on a $ 22 million budget. That’s not a typo. Thirteen THOUSAND dollars. What went wrong? It was a troubled production that ran overbudget, but how did so much talent fall flat in theaters?

Ultimately, it was just bad luck. A small science fiction film called Star Wars was released four weeks before Sorcerer. These were the days before home video. The only way to see a film was in theaters, and Star Wars mania dominated the country when Sorcerer hit theaters. Audiences wanted to see Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader square off for the third, fourth or fifth time rather than check out a thriller about four men transporting volatile cargo through a South American jungle.

For decades Sorcerer simply disappeared. In the formative years of the home video market, no one wanted to put out a flop on VHS (nor later on DVD). If it didn’t do well in theaters, no one was paying $ 80.00 for a VHS copy of it. So, Sorcerer fell into obscurity.

A few weeks ago a gorgeous edition of Sorcerer hit shelves courtesy of The Criterion Collection. Being added to their global canon of cinema not only gives film fans a beautiful 4K UHD edition of the film, but it also serves to place William Friedkin in his proper context as one of THE auteurs of the 1970’s, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. There have been other releases of the film, but this is the best looking and sounding edition of Sorcerer you’ll find.

Briefly (so as not to spoil the fun), Sorcerer is the tale of desperate men taking desperate measures to extract themselves from the squalor of the South American hellhole they find themselves in. A local oil company is battling a raging fire at one of its wells. Standard operating procedure is to create a large explosion that sucks the oxygen out of the immediate surroundings and extinguishes the fire. The only problem: the oil company has used all their on-site dynamite to clear the surrounding jungle.

Enter Jackie Scanlon (Scheider) and his motley crew who sign on to transport a load of sweaty, unstable dynamite through the “roads” of a South American jungle. For those of you who aren’t chemists (like me), dynamite “sweats” nitroglycerine. All it takes is a big bounce to blow the cargo and drivers sky high. Scanlon and his comrades are literally driving a bomb through the jungle with a big theoretical paycheck waiting for the survivors. Master French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot tackled this same subject matter in his 1953 black and white masterpiece The Wages of Fear which is also enshrined in The Criterion Collection.

Sorcerer is a master class of suspense and character development. The opening of the film is a brief origin story for each of the four men and gives their characters a depth that was largely ignored in typical 1970’s thrillers. We know why each man is willing to take on such a dangerous assignment. They all need a miracle to turn their lives around. The search for that miracle culminates in one of the bravura suspense sequences in film history as they navigate the decaying span of a rotting bridge in a torrential downpour (pictured above).

Criterion is the gold standard for film restoration. Their new 4K digital restoration of the film and its accompanying 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack were approved by Friedkin prior to his death in August 2023. Remastering 1970’s films is tricky business. The goal is to make it sharper and richer without losing all the film grain in the process. It’s no surprise to anyone that Criterion nailed it. Sorcerer hasn’t looked this good since the weekend of its ill-fated opening. (Be certain to turn off any motion smoothing function on your television, and set the frame rate to 24 frames a second to avoid that strange polished look that TV manufacturers created for live sports broadcasts.)

This release of Sorcerer is full of the kind of extra content that seems to be omitted from so many home video releases these days. The Criterion edition includes Friedkin Uncut, a 2018 feature length documentary on the director’s career. Fans are getting two Friedkin films in one.

All Criterion releases are currently 50% off at Barnes & Noble (through July 27th). Add Sorcerer to your collection and rediscover an underseen classic that deserved a much better fate in theaters than it received.