One of the great mecha movies. The central sequence is fundamentally about being embodied in a hulking, groaning, smoke-spewing machine; the titular Sorcerer, painted so that its grille resembles a constant pained grimace of yellowing teeth, is as much a body horror conceit as anything.
The characters in this movie interact with the world entirely through their devices – knives, machetes, guns. Whenever they are forced to use their bare hands, they are clumsy, weak, lost. Like all great mecha fiction, Sorcerer builds on the idea of vulnerability; human bodies are fragile meat bags in a world of industrial horrors. But no human body is more vulnerable than the one at the heart of the machine.
People think of this movie as a two-hour anxiety attack but I view it more as a horrible ritual of a diesel-soaked religion. Roy Scheider walks into this movie with the *Jaws* glow still fresh on him, and by the end he's *shriven.* Basically gone, little but a negative impression of the teeth of the machine that burned most of him for fuel.
