Cartels! Cocaine! Carnage! How Scarface became a cult hit… by a razor’s edge

It didn’t get a sniff of success on its release, but 40 years on, Brian De Palma’s ultra-violent gangster epic remains a classic. Geoffrey McNab recalls how the on-camera chaos was easily matched by behind-the-scenes insanity – from Al Pacino wrecking his nose with (fake) cocaine to writer Oliver Stone narrowly avoiding being murdered by (real) drug dealers...

Ultra violence with a hint of disco-era high camp: Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino in ‘Scarface’ (Shutterstock)

Brian De Palma knew how to sell his wares. “Cubans! Cocaine! Al Pacino! Machine Guns! Girls! Wow,” the director rhapsodised to Esquire magazine on why, in his professed opinion, his new feature, Scarface (1983), was the greatest movie of the last 10 years.

It’s doubtful the director actually believed his own assertions. The film, which is being re-released in December to celebrate its 40th anniversary, had a famously troubled production involving some very combustible personalities. Equally troubled was its eventual release, mired as it was by divisive reviews and the threatened stigma of an X rating against its name. Regardless, Scarface has long since entered the pantheon of Hollywood gangster movies.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the film’s behind-the-scenes drama is the near death of its maverick writer Oliver Stone, who was almost killed by drug dealers in the Bahamas where he was completing research for the script. As Stone wrote in his recent autobiography, Chasing the Light, like his protagonist, he too was taking plenty of cocaine at the time. After saying the wrong thing to his Colombian drinking partners, he became convinced he and his wife would be shot and their bodies dumped “in some swamp to be devoured by crabs”.