Sorcerer is a 1977 American existential thriller film directed and produced by William Friedkin and starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou. The second adaptation of 's 1950 French novel Le Salaire de la peur, it has been widely considered a remake of the first adaptation, the 1953 film The Wages of Fear. Friedkin has disagreed with this notion. The plot depicts four outcasts from varied backgrounds meeting in a South American village, where they are assigned to transport cargoes of nitroglycerin.