FILM:  WAKE IN FRIGHT:
Cast: Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Jack Thompson, Sylvia Kay.
Rated: M.
Directed by: Ted Kotcheff.
Country: Australia.
Year: 1971.
Running Time: 109 Minutes.
Format: DVD and Blu-Ray.

Review:

‘Wake in Fright’ is a film that has captured the Australian outback with an unrelenting intensity unlike anything made in Australia before or since its original release 38 years ago, and more importantly, a testament to a lost identity in an all too rapidly changing landscape.     

It took Canadian director Ted Kotcheff [First Blood] and UK cinematographer Brian West [84 Charing Cross Road] to capture what we would normally have taken for granted, and in doing so they have created a film as fierce and brutal as the harsh Australian outback can be at its most unforgiving.  

Gary Bond stars as the ill-fated outback teacher plunged into darkness as he becomes trapped like a fly in a spiders web in a fictitious country town on his way to Sydney, and Donald Pleasence, in one of his best ever screen performances, is ‘Doc’ Tydon, a ghost of a man who has surrendered to a place and elements where time and people ask no questions.

In his big screen debut, Jack Thompson also stands out a town rouge you just know is going to be trouble, but it is legendary Australian icon Chips Rafferty as the town cop, in his final screen role, that exudes an unnerving intensity with a deceptively menacing and disturbing performance that ranks among the best of his career.  

The real star of ‘Wake in Fright’ is the Australian outback itself, the heat and sweat flow off the screen like torrential downpour for every frame of its 109 minutes, and even with a glimmer of hope on the horizon, a burning tirade of brutality boils silently beneath the stark brooding surface.

Rarely seen since its original release in 1971, the original negative went missing, but after a long search, and a lot of persistence and patience by the films Editor Anthony Buckley, it was finally found in a warehouse in the U.S. in 2004 in a box marked for destruction, and has now been stunningly restored and available as a special edition on DVD and Blu-ray.

Like the land, the time, the characters and the journey it so vividly depicts, ‘Wake in Fright’ is the missing link in the chain that has finally joined its long overdue and well deserved place among the all too few truly unique milestones of Australian cinema, as with the previously released ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang,’ ranking as one of the most important Australian restorations of all time.   

As to what kind of film ‘Wake in Fright’ would have turned out to be with and all Australian cast and crew we will never know, but as it stands, it has been to the advantage of Australian and world cinema that a Canadian director and a UK cinematographer ultimately helmed such a deeply rooted and provocatively intense Australian subject matter, impossible to imagine the final result being anything else so fiercely driven and less passionate than it is here.

A similar case in point is when U.K. director John Schlesinger and Polish cinematographer Adam Holender went to the U.S. for the first time, it was their fresh and untouched vision that brought to the surface the stark reality too long buried in the dark shadows behind the deceptive facades of a brooding New York that resulted in the searing 1969 Oscar winning classic ‘Midnight Cowboy.’

‘Wake in Fright’ is as tough as the outback itself, this is no ‘Crocodile Dundee,’ it is not recommended as a first date movie, and you most certainly won’t find this being endorsed by the Australian Tourism Commission, but one thing is definitely for sure, once you have seen it, this is a motion picture experience you will never forget!

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