Box Office Poison: Sorcerer + Tim Robey Intro
15 166 mins
15 166 mins
Join Tim Robey, film critic and author of Box Office Poison, for a special screening of William Friedkin's Sorcerer at Hackney Picturehouse.
From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Tim Robey’s hugely entertaining Box Office Poison tells an alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops.
Freaks, Land of the Pharaohs, Dune, Speed 2, Catwoman, Cats: what can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite – or lack of it – and the circumstances that saw such box office disasters actually made? Away from the canon, here is the definitive take on these ill-fated but essential celluloid failures.
Sorcerer
A gangster, a crooked banker, a hitman and an arab terrorist are stranded and on the run in a small village in South America. Their only chance of escape is to drive two trucks filled with unstable nitroglycerin up a long and rocky mountain road in order to plug an escalating oil refinery blaze. With their deadly cargo likely to explode at the slightest bump, the four men must put aside their differences and work together to survive.