Wake in Fright (1971) | Little White Lies

Wake in Fright (1971)

06 Mar 2014 / Released: 07 Mar 2014

Words by Mark Asch

Directed by Ted Kotcheff

Starring Chips Rafferty, Donald Pleasence, and Gary Bond

A man shouts loudly, his face contorted in an angry expression, from behind the wheel of a vehicle.
A man shouts loudly, his face contorted in an angry expression, from behind the wheel of a vehicle.
4

Anticipation.

After decades of exile, an Aussie cult classic staggers onto the revival circuit.

4

Enjoyment.

Water! Water!

4

In Retrospect.

Perhaps slightly schematic in charting the descent of man, but it induces a sweat that’s hard to wash off.

A meek and mild school teacher spi­rals into Aussie Hell in this riv­et­ing, repel­lant restoration.

With its heat-bleached palette, sound­track of buzzing flies, and scene upon scene of mat­ted faces swill­ing can upon can of West End lager, Wake in Fright is per­haps the most dehy­drat­ing expe­ri­ence in all cin­e­ma. Set in the Aus­tralian Out­back, where a smug­ly urbane school­teacher is pulled into heart-of-dark­ness booze-ups and kan­ga­roo hunts, the film is about a no-exit infer­no — though the hell is per­haps not the hyper­ma­cho out­post of Bun­danyab­ba, but rather mas­culin­i­ty itself.

A close adap­ta­tion of Aus­tralian nov­el­ist Ken­neth Cook’s debut — derived from his expe­ri­ences as an out­sider in Bro­ken Hill, the min­ing town where much of the film was shot — Wake in Fright, with its Cana­di­an direc­tor Ted Kotch­eff and Brit toplin­ers, was noto­ri­ous among an Aus­tralian audi­ence divid­ed over its por­trait of ani­mal­is­tic mate­ship.” After decades out of cir­cu­la­tion, the film returns to us in a ver­sion restored from neg­a­tives saved from the brink of incin­er­a­tion in a Pitts­burgh ware­house, and still radi­ates an uncom­fort­able heat.

As John Grant, deployed unwill­ing­ly to a town con­sist­ing of two build­ings bisect­ed by rail­road tracks and sur­round­ed by arid void, Gary Bond has the lips, the desert-foxy blond hair, and the super­cil­ious enti­tle­ment of Peter O’Toole as TE Lawrence. En route to Syd­ney for the Christ­mas hol­i­day, an overnight stop in the Yab­ba” turns indef­i­nite when he over­es­ti­mates his mas­tery of the nice, sim­ple-mind­ed” back­room two-up game. Mon­ey gone, suit­cas­es full of books soon left behind in a bar, he expe­ri­ences the local hos­pi­tal­i­ty as a spi­ral of twist-my-arm binges (“What’s the mat­ter with him? He’d rather talk to a woman than drink?”), horse­play edg­ing into wan­ton prop­er­ty destruc­tion and brute strug­gle for dom­i­nance, and morn­ing-after fry-ups of kan­ga­roo testicles.

Grant’s guide on his antihero’s jour­ney is Doc Tydon, played by Don­ald Pleasence with watery blue eyes hor­ri­bly wide. Tydon is Grant’s look­ing-glass dou­ble, play­ing opera records in a shack with no plumb­ing, civilised impuls­es recon­sti­tut­ed as par­ty tricks (demon­strat­ing peri­stal­sis, he drinks a beer stand­ing on his head, foam and spit­tle fleck­ing his beard). Tydon drinks as des­per­ate­ly as any­one in the Yab­ba — but knows why.

Kotch­eff, who let loose red dust and flies in the stu­dio inte­ri­ors, alter­nates black­out cuts with direct light as scald­ing as a hang­over sun. He also took pains, he has late­ly empha­sised, not to par­tic­i­pate in or com­pel the deaths of kan­ga­roos. Wake in Fright’s most noto­ri­ous scenes were filmed on a ride along with pro­fes­sion­al roo hunters, and the out­takes were hand­ed over to the RSP­CA for use in their cam­paigns. The beery hunt sequence is a mas­sacre to rival the era’s Viet­nam West­erns, though when Grant takes on a kan­ga­roo with a knife, lit by a spot­light mount­ed on a Ford Fair­lane and roared on by his new mates, it is sure­ly the cli­max of a less spe­cif­ic, more pri­mal alle­go­ry. The title comes from a curse: May you dream of the dev­il and wake in fright.” But here, the dev­il is you, and it’s not a dream but a memory.

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