S4E32.5 The Wages of Fear

Hell Drivers (1957) is a great little film about truck drivers in post-war Britain living a desperate existence, and it even features a shockingly young Sean Connery and David McCallum. A fitting addition to truck season

God, that “you might have been a man in my grandfather’s time” line hit me… The way constructs like “adulthood” and “masculinity” get stretched to their breaking point in an attempt to keep up with the ever increasing demands of capital. Just like real wages, The Wages of Fear- aka, the social status and self-actualization you’re SUPPOSED to get as a reward for your suffering- have failed to keep up with inflation. Maybe Joe really was a “real man” in his day- but for Mario’s generation, that’s just not enough anymore.

*guy who's only ever seen the film Sorceror* Getting a lot of Sorceror vibes from this one.

ABBY STOP TELLING THAT STORY OH MY GOD

Oooft sorry but the carbon thing is worse than that; because the rate of emissions increases with time the comparable carbon output at the 1950s was way lower than 1970 which was way lower than 2000. If you wanted to go back to a time when half the current carbon in the atmosphere had been emitted you'd be looking at the mod to late 1990s, not 1950

Looking forward to the Smokey and the Bandit episode of truck season.

leaving my tannerite dog in my overheating nitroglycerine truck and receiving INSTANT karmic retribution for my cruelty

Man, as a Career Truck Driver often pushing through "You might die" weather for 10 Hour Shifts I FELT this Episode.

Are they a VIP? No. Are they the GOAT?? Get outta here. They're the VIG🐐

Patreon is getting worse, which is a whole Trashfuture topic in and of itself as opposed to here, but hey I'll keep finding a way to send money, even if I have to put cash in an envelope

I am disappointed that all reference to remakes don't refer to the Joe 90 episode where the job of shipping the 'no hot, no bump juice' is given to a 9 year old boy. By his dad.

if truck season. please do Big trouble in little China!!

Really fucked up that I mostly knew the plot of this film from the episode of The Goon Show: 'The Fear of Wages'

Never knew sorcerer was a remake, gonna check this out!

before religion season is over you NEED to do PENDA'S FEN you HAVE TO cover this movie it is NOT ABOUT NINE ELEVEN

??? 🐉💀

The thing that I fucking hate about the Nihilistic Penguin video getting suddenly popular is A. Fuck you all, I was aware of it way before you all, I'm a Nihilistic Penguin hipster, you're all just tourists B. Everyone is having the most asinine takes on it. It's all the psudo-Nietzschean "the penguin is a based Chad who goes to the mountains because it can" or "he didn't go there to die, he went there to see if he was really alive" that the fascist US government plays to in it's stupidity. No. The penguin is not a master of Will To Power. The penguin is realizing the meaninglessness of it's existence. Of going back and forth between the colony and the ocean, of trying to find a mate, of the absurdity of living. Why should it go on with this cycle? There is no point. It is trapped by the nausea of free will and the meaninglessness of any action it could take. It goes to the mountains not because it wants to, or because it seeks some greatness, but because going to the mountains and facing certain death is no different than going to the colony or the ocean. It does matter. It just goes that way. Actually, the exact same towards-death toxic masculinity that this movie is depicting and criticizing is being played out by all these online morons responding to the video. It's childish, it glorifies self destructive behavior as some noble thing, and it's all just a defensive mechanism to cope with the hopelessness and powerlessness these people are experiencing under capitalism.

I heard that "Dog Stoner" "Shaggy" bit Devon, don't worry.

This is like THE lumpenproletariat movie.

Sign in the car window that says “The dog in this car is perfectly comfortable! The aircon is on and he is full of tannerite.”

It was really funny imagining nintendo Mario and Luigi in these situations

Thank you for doing this movie. It was my dad’s favorite. And it is mine. 🧡

Me at the beginning: I don't know this movie. Me when Sorcerer gets brought up as a remake: Yeah, I don't know this movie. Me when the actual premise of the movie comes into play: Oh, this sounds like that Roy Scheider movie I watched a couple years ago. So basically Sorcerer is a terrible name for this movie. But it was a great film, there was about an hour straight where I held my breath.

So turns out, by pure coincidence, I recreated this film in a Paranoia oneshot I once ran? Basically the Troubleshooters were given half a dozen barrels of nitroglycerin to transport, with the kicker being that knowledge of how to properly handle explosives was outside their clearance level so Friend Computer would constantly chide them for going too slowly and carefully.

Thank you for the gift of this movie. What a treat!

Surely Duel (1971) is the ultimate Noble Carman vs Evil Truckman movie?

If your doing truck season , you need to watch the 1978 film convoy , based on the song, convoy

The Truck being the natural enemy of The Car is distilled to it's purest essence in Duel, so I hope that's coming up soon in Truckin' season

Oh we doing French trucking movies now ? OK. Try "100.000 dollars au soleil" (Greed in the Sun).

It took me a while to realise that the character's name was actually O'Brien and it wasn't just Abby making a Deep Space Nine reference.

are u guys ok

Truck season must include Convoy

Watched a movie recently that might fit in really well for car season - Titane (2021). I can guarantee there is no shortage of stuff to talk about

Mad Max: Fury Road is a truck movie. I wonder if it says anything about masculinity? Although that being said the Mad Max movies would be pretty solid candidates for a live show series just because of the fits you could get off.

Getting Bimba-fication surgery (blown to smithereens by nitroglycerin)

I am, in fact, driving a truck... shit.

"Those who make peaceful trucking impossible make violent trucking inevitable" -mad max fury road

If you are doing Truck Season, consider "Ice Cold in Alex" (1958) which has similarities to "Wages of Fear" in that it's about the challenge of getting somewhere with a truck. Less bleak but less existential.

I’m pretty sure uncle boonmee has a truck in it

MAXIMUM ORVERDRIVE!!!

If y'all are doing truck season, I am once again asking you to watch "big trouble in Little China"

Oh, speaking of the white guy having sex with a black woman thing: in the novel Live and Let Die, Felix Leiter (a Texan) says that you used to be able to go to Harlem and hire a "high-yaller" sex worker for the evening and then go to the clinic the next morning to treat the syphilis but you can't do that anymore because everyone is all tense because of civil rights

I love when Nova drags this podcast into close readings of the greatest movies ever made while she quotes literary fiction (here, Don Delillo's Libra, for those keeping count)

So, Bimba's moment of paralysis puts me in mind of this: In my late teens, trapped in a place and hanging out with awful people, my skills and capabilities were often doubted. I am a competent chemist, had extracted insulin for my own use, done an OK job of producing things that worked as blockers, and alot of analytical work kept this 'community's' overdose rate low. I got told I couldn't do chemistry (or anything abt which I spoke), and challenged to build an explosive device. I did. I gave it to the person who had issued the challenge (foolish manuever), said 'take this to the woods, bury it and light the fuse before retiring'. He wandered abt the patio with it stuck in his belt. I was certain someone'd light it when he was distracted. This didn't happen. Instead he whipped it out and lit it. And then stood there looking round for somewhere to put it as the area cleared. Just prior to ducking behind the retaining wall I saw him throw it into a cast-iron chemenier. Followed by a terrific BOOM. I was obviously prepared for some horrific visuals when I stood back up. Of the chemenier, legs and a portion of it's base were all that remained. The lad who'd lit the fuse had a few scrapes and hearing loss, and noone else was injured. I went and vomited then left.

TRUCK SEASON CONVOY KRIS KRISTOFFERSON'S CONVOY IT'S LIKE A TEXTUALLY LEFTIST MOVIE

Another layer to Linda's character. Linda is just "cute" in spanish. Its lower case L linda. She doesn't have a name.

best 1950s french film to adapt into a whacky co-op videogame

I didnt know sorcerer was a remake!

This movie s likely the inspo for an early episode of Macgyver TOS episode. 1.08

Abigail truly out here saying stuff most people would need a gun to their head to admit

Obviously the thing to do now is do Wages of Fear season where you also watch the 1958 American remake Violent Road, William Friedkin's 1977 adaptation Sorcerer, and the 2024 French remake.

I have only ever encountered this film through the Goon Show parody entitled The Fear Of Wages. Very interested to see how this plays out. Hopefully less racist Japanese accents.

I'm sad they couldn't fit Yoshi into the movie.

Not seen this movie, but the remake is one of my favourites. This is like meeting it's dad.

Trucking Tuesday

Can I just say, I watched this movie in preparation for the episode and it is now one of my favourite movies ever

This one's gonna be brains dojo, I'll have to save this one for a better time.

Every other Nova pick is a deeply moving 50s European cinema piece that is balanced out by the pick of some crazy 2000s action flick. Long may it continue