Kill James Bond! - S4E43.5: Sorceror

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

This is a preview of a bonus episode. find the rest on our reasonably-priced Patreon! Today we're examining William Friedkin's re-adaptation of the novel on which Wages of Fear (1953) was based. Famously kneecapped in the box office by the release of 'Star Wars', Friedkin long held that if the movie was given it's proper due, it would have been his great breakout hit, and he would find himself amongst titans like James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg. Let's see if we agree. ----- HANDS OFF LEBANON Here are some fundraisers to support collective rebuilding and survival efforts on the ground in Lebanon. -Beit El-Baraka started out as a food bank, but has grown to help people afford rent, cover their essentials, and live with dignity.  https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-directly/ or donate in general https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-now/ -LiveLove was a charity for a number of other matters, but since 2024 has been solely comitted to helping people displaced by Israeli attacks. https://livelove.org/donate -Lebanese Food Bank supports displaced and impoverished people https://lebanesefoodbank.org/take-action/donate/ Solar Powered Lebanon is an initiative to restore people's power using solar panels, since larger infrastructure is at constant risk of attack. https://fundahope.com/en/campaigns/solar-powered-lebanon ----- FREE PALESTINE My friend Ahmed still needs to feed his family and afford medicine. Anything you can kick in would be hugely appreciated. https://chuffed.org/project/150817-please-help-ahmed-and-his-family-get-food-drink-and-medicine And these are some more general links you can support collective efforts with! -The Palestinian Communist Youth Union is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ ----- Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the everything app account

Hello and welcome to Season 4 episode 32 and a half of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined as always by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hello, gentle listen. Hello, how are you doing, Kawabunga? It's definitely not that episode. I don't know why are you doing a new thing? Yeah, well, the thing is, the thing is that in season four, episode 32 and a half,

we confronted a film made in France, which is where they invented the concept of having seen something before, you know? I forget what it's called. Yeah, there's some kind of term in French. It's in French, yeah. At this point, here we have to confront that French term, whatever it is, because we're watching a remake of that film. That film was Wages of Fear.

Yeah, which we enjoyed. We really liked it. Very much. I had a really good time of Wages of Fear. I had a somewhat difficult time watching it, like physically finding and watching it, but that's probably a me problem. Something that it has in common with its remake, I'll say.

But yeah, the Wages of Fear was black and white existentialist sort of death march of capitalism film. And in this case, we are doing the American 70s remake of it, Sorcero. Yeah, where they kind of remove most of the anti-capitalist themes, and it becomes a kind of man-vied God movie, as they call it in the industry, or a man-vue nature movie. which I think is, it's still a good film and it's well made, but I just cast out the table, I like the original better, but all right, we'll get into it, also. I like the original better, definitely. There's some things in this I like more than the original,

but not everything, not the whole movie. Crucially, this is a film directed by William Friedkin, who directed cruising. We've done one episode about before, and that was the one where it was Everyone v. Devon. Ah, yeah, okay. I don't mean to just do this, exclusively to you, but I'm not a huge William Friedkin fan.

We've done two, actually. We've done rules of engagement as well, I believe. Oh, okay. Ages back, yeah. We did not like that movie. This is an evil film. Also an evil film episode. Yeah, that was an evil movie, yeah.

Is this guy evil? I think maybe yes. I mean, we're going to do to live and die in L.A. at some point, which absolutely is an evil film. Hopefully just the living part, not the dying. part. But Sorcerer is, this was like Willing Freakins' passion project. If you remember the

tweet that's like my new script, bright if made properly, could be my Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, I think about that a lot. He went all in on getting the rights to the book that Wages of Fear as an adaptation of and doing not

a remake in his mind, but a sort of a different adaptation of it. This was going to be the thing that put him on the map. And then, this came out in June of 1977 and do you know what else came out? 10,000 decibel. Star Wars music kicks in. Yeah.

No one's seeing any other fucking movies. Moron. It's not happening. George Lucas said, if made properly, this could be my Star Wars on account of that it's Star Wars. And so this is kind of this really underperform. Thank God my wife is editing my movie. Hope we never divorce.

George Lucas driving the longest car in the world perfectly running over and killing William Friedkin and Freedkin never really kind of got over this even for the rest of his career he was like no this should have been the thing that made me like a huge hit Lucas big right and I don't think that it's good enough to do that no it's decent but it's not good enough to do that but you know glad he put his heart and soul into it

He's been on record all the time about how good this would have been, if not for Star Wars. I don't know, man. It's a fine movie. It's not better than cruising. Let me do a little segue here, because I've been watching the World Cup, right? Yes, it's coming home. It's coming home. At time of recording, it is coming home.

At time of recording, it's coming to fuck home. It's coming home to current Prime Minister Kea Starmer. Yeah. And, you know, we're going to beat France. and then Andy Burnham's first day in office he's going to have to call McFron and talk about it which is going to be funny No, I've been watching the World Cup

and I'm going to embark on kind of a risky gambit given half of where our listeners are from But America is one of the cheatingest nations on the face of the planet It's so crazy Every American I am personally enemies with It's crazy how if you do

anything to hurt in Americans' feelings that becomes intolerable to them and that comes in like a left flavour it comes in a lib flavour, it comes in a right flavour, my enemy is the American people, sick of these fuckers. Get them out of here. Do not unsubscribe from the Patreon. I don't know, I'm... Every single one of you,

keep giving me that money. I'm not so sure about that. I'm like Americans, I did very much enjoy watching the World Cup last night in a room full of Americans supporting Norway as the only Income to where and there. Just getting to be the... smuggest bitch of the party that was really fucking funny.

How good was England, boys? How good was... I also really enjoyed watching the Belgium v. USA match in a bar and then immediately ordering a Belgian male with Belgium one. Let me just go back here to my text to the group chat that I did after we beat Norway, which just says, Stell and Scarsgaard, Perlundgvist,

Hans Christian Anderson your boys took one hell of a beating and I'd like you to note that none of those people are Norway coded what's the problem You know here's the thing I was getting up Dining out on this a lot last night

This is actually it was a coloniser versus colonized football match Where we got to be the colonized For the first time ever This one's for Linda's for you motherfuckers Yeah absolutely And so As it will be against Argentine

The reason why I brought up Americans being whining cheats, get at me in the comments, do not get at me in the exit surveys, is because this is a very American adaptation. It is. And the last one that we saw was a very French adaptation, right? And I think you can kind of talk about this most effectively with the way that they do their opening scenes, right? Because the way that wages of fear does its opening scene, we didn't really mention this

when we talked about it because it's not really relevant and it's kind of uncomfortable to talk about. that Wages of Fear opens with basically an hour of this town is sad and poor and it's horrible here and also there's a bunch of child nudity in it right? That's France. The first shot.

Who we are going to beat in the semi-final. Who we are going to beat in the semifinals. Fuck you, Killinghambape. It's over for you. I'm coming for you. The first shot of Wages of Fear is like it's four like insects tied together pulling each other in different directions.

and it's such a beautiful, like, scene setting for what you're going to get. It's very philosophical. It's very sort of, like, aesthetic is very studied. Why does that child naked? Why didn't you have to be naked? But then, in the United Snakes of America, Kaka, they make the opening seat of this movie a guy getting perfectly 009ed with a silenced revolver.

It's a 009 scene. We go to Veracruz, Mexico, and we're introducing, like, our four guys who are going to be doing wages of fear, truck driving shit later on. And our guy, Nilo walks in, domes off a double-09-minute silence pistol. I'm just going to talk about the way Nilo is dressed. He's got a blue suit. White shoes. White shoes.

Sunglasses. Hat. Really wide collar. My man is hitting the disco after this killing. That's crazy. Imagine someone wearing white shoes. That is confidence. You're not earning the wages of fear wearing white shoes.

No. No, you're not. No way. He's not scared at all in this. And then it hits someone. me with the second sort of body blow because having gone, hey, you remember that kind of studied philosophical movie? Well, guess what motherfucker? Gunn. It then takes me to Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Like the naked gun two and a half. Yeah. Like World War Z. Like World War Z.

And all of us British being very careful about what we say on the microphone. Yes, we see. Okay, let's be as absolutely, yeah, let's just be objective. We see a group of four Palestinian immigrants. It takes us to Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four Palestinian militants, let's say, taking action, they blow up the, they blow up one of the gates, the Damascus gate, I think, in Jerusalem. They do an action. They do, they do an operation, right?

These four guys, they're wearing, they're wearing kippers, right? They're like in disguise. And they leave a bad. behind on the steps of just like a building. It's not even important which one. And they get on a bus, it blows up, right? Battle of Algiers stuff. Yeah.

Incidentally, the whole sort of background of this is, it's very noisy, right? There's a lot of kind of street noise. There's almost a Nazan mixed in as well. It's like very much determined to sell the kind of like, this is chaotic. This is like bad neighborhood stuff. A bustling place, yeah. So they race back to their safe house

and they're bugging out when troops enter the building gun down some of them and arrest some others there's a huge crowd outside that forms and is like arguing with the authorities and I really like that the crowd shots are shot from within the crowd

as if you are in it. It's a really nice creative way of shooting a crowd for probably not a lot of money because you only need like four guys and then you need the sound of 50 guys and you can make it look really big. It's cleverly alienating it's using the same kind of thing

we've talked about being a kind of like a racist crowd, right? In a sort of like, you know, reversed way, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The little girl with the gun is here, yeah. Yeah, a couple of things about this. First of all, it does suggest that the IDF are like, they're on the case, like, instantly, for one thing. Yes.

Well, they might have been funding it for all we know. Yeah. They also shoot first, right? They do. And we get a kind of really loving Forsythian, shot of like an oozy muzzle as they just gun these guys down. But then, so I think it's, we're articulating this politically as like, man, Israel's chaotic, but these guys don't fuck around kind of thing, right?

It's an incidental part of the movie. The stance is like, damn, that's crazy. But one of the guys gets away. It's his POV we see in the crowd because he's like watching the other guy get taken away. Two of them get killed. One of them gets captured. They don't matter. And he's watching him get taken away.

It's really good. It's a really nice shot of the guy, yeah. Yeah. Also, insanely hard soundtrack. I wasn't expecting synths here. Yeah, normal was I. As any Fallout 4 player says. But what we get is a kind of tangerine dream soundtrack.

And it, I would say, the best part of the movie, by far. Well, yeah. Then we go to a guy's apartment in Paris. A beautiful fucking apartment, too. Oh, love this place. We meet guy number three, Victor. who's chatting to his wife, she's writing a history book. Insanely hot wife.

It's insanely hot. Barefoot wife as well. Hello, Quentin Tarantino. His insanely hot barefoot wife. His insanely hot French barefoot wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooh, Les Piggies. My first, lay gripper?

Le Schia? No. But like, this is where I write down, damn, this guy's insanely hot, barefoot wife is insanely hot. wish I could understand her because Devin and I had a bit of a sort of travail watching this one. We had to go to two separate YouTube videos, one of which had the non-English Dialogue subtitled, but also had a bunch of weird cuts for presumably evading copyright protection.

And another one which didn't have the weird cuts, but also didn't have the... Didn't have the non-English subtitles, which has since become private also. I just went to reopen it, so I could follow along while we were doing it. in the episode and it's been taken down. How easily you forget the words of Dominic Toreto. Watch any movie with free subtitles, open subtitles.com. Fuck, you're so right. I don't have the bandwidth to Torrance anything.

You're lucky you get podcasts still. It's why it sound like I'm in a phone box. I said it before the episode. I say it now. You go to YouTube. You go to Google. You type in watch Sorcerer Free Online UK. And then when nothing comes up, you go,

damn, I guess I can't do the episode of the podcast. It's a pretty sure it's on Amazon as well. But anyway, his insanely his wife gives him a watch that says, I am your wife. It's a classic anniversary gift that we've seen movie protagonist scare before. Just be tough.

Yeah, it says, do not have the wages of fear happen to you engraved on the back. By the way, the book that she's writing is a biography of this colonial officer. Like back in the day. And we see that our Frenchman, he's kind of like

woke, you know, and so he's he's dismissive of it yeah she's telling him the story about how this officer was going to have to like fire his artillery but like a civilian woman was in the way and he knew that he would like remove her from the world with a gesture um to which our frenchman asks well did he do it and she says yes and he goes okay well he's just a soldier then and she says no one's just one thing right which is the moral of the movie again i feel like there's more than a few times talking about Sorcerer where I'm going to say that I think it's a strangely insecure film about its message. And in this one, it's really like, no, second scene, you have to know this, right? No one's, no one's just one thing.

Pay attention. This will be on the test. Sure. But anyway, Victor goes to see a banker and his banker's like, yo, what's up? Fifteen million francs. We've got some questions.

We've got some questions about all of the money. Come in, come in. sit down. Yeah. You know, you invested all this money in AI? He's kind of

already at the end of his rope, right? He's yelling at his younger colleague to, like, call his colleague's father who owns the business and is like the kind of, you know,

Pat of Familius. All my apes gone. If you want to hear the rest of this episode of Kill James Bond and the 45 uninterrupted minutes of anti-American insults,

stings, barbs and arrows, then you are going to have to head on over to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash kill James Bond, all one word, and sign up today for as little as five pounds a month. Five pounds a month? How many things are asking you for five pounds a month these days? It's mostly 15 now. And you can give us 15 pounds a month, but you don't have to. That's the point.