Wake in Fright (digitally restored)

Director: Ted Kotcheff
Cast: Donald Pleasance, Jack Thompson, Gary Bond and Chips Rafferty
Releasing in cinemas: 25 June 2009
Rated: M

Aussies behaving badly

The digitally restored print of the Wake in Fright is a wake-up call to the audience. Never has the outback been portrayed with such gutsy intensity. A blighted land of blowflies, drunken Ockers, Two Up schools, slaughtered kangaroos, and desolate vistas. Hardly a ringing endorsement for tourism, rather a searing indictment of beer swilling behaviour in our not too distant past. This disturbing film challenged the way we saw ourselves in context of the outback. Certainly making a statement you won’t forget. Indeed it couldn’t have been produced today, the shooting sequence would not allowed by present rules on harming animals.

Disgruntled schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond) stuck in a desolate little outback town of Tiboonda desperately looks forward to his summer holiday in Sydney. On route he stops over at the remote mining community of Bandanyabba. The isolated residents of ‘The Yabba’ are a wild west bunch, gregarious and mostly boozed out of their brains. John gets suckered into their world of heavy drinking and gambling, under the uneasy auspices of the apparently generous local lawman Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty).

Next day after losing his savings in a game of Two Up, John is befriended by alcoholic Tim Haynes (Al Thomas) his redneck mates Dick (Jack Thompson), Joe (Peter Whittle) and the menacingly amiable Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence). In an afternoon of solid drinking John has an unsatisfactory seduction with Hayne’s daughter Janette (Sylvia Kay). Totally plastered John passes out to wake in Doc’s squalid hut. He’s inveigled into another day of boozing ending in a brutal kangaroo hunt with Doc, Tim, Dick, and Joe. Next morning violated and disgusted, John hitches a ride out of The Yabba. In this hellish descent into violence escape doesn’t come that easily.

Wake in Fright made in 1971 with the grungy realism later used to effect in Bangkok Hilton, young Nicole Kidman smothered in cockroaches. To put things in perspective 1971 also saw Sam Peckinpah’s violent controversial film Straw Dogs banned in the UK. It might be argued director Ted Kotcheff (Rambo: First Blood) went overboard with his dark depiction of the outback, never so many flies in unsavory conditions. Really Wake in Fright is as much a horror movie as Wolf Creek. A nightmare with Kafkaesque overtones. John Grant caught in a circle of desperation unable to escape his macho mates and The Yabba, underbelly of the outback.

Kenneth Cook’s novel was based on his experiences in Broken Hill so the exteriors were shot there, with interiors filmed in Sydney. There’s a grainy quality of location shots, the feeling of gritty desolation comes from the opening pan of dry plains, and the unforgettable small derelict railway station with it’s handless clock. This was the last film for Chips Rafferty popular star of The Overlanders and The Rats of Tobruk, while it was coincidentally the first feature for Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant).

Donald Pleasence with Aussie accent is memorable as the sinisterly grotesque Doc Tydon. The English actor with demonic eyes and unsettling features appeared in many movies including Roman Polanski’s Cul de Sac. Veteran actor Chips Rafferty exceedingly good as the inscrutable cop, comfortable in this type of role looking every inch the part. In the lead Gary Bond generally convincing as the British teacher out of his depth in a mad Aussie world, and Jack Thompson makes his presence felt as the tough beer swilling hunter. John Mellion (Crocodile Dundee) adds splash of dry humour in a cameo appearance as a disheveled barman.

Wake in Fright appeared at Cannes in ‘71, but lacked commercial success despite some critical acclaim. Not easy to sell such a down beat film, with the edifying spectacle of a drunken hunting spree. Yet what remains with you is the kangaroo shoot, the battered Ford Customline hurtling through the scrub in hot pursuit of ‘roos at serious risk to those in the car. The cruelty of the hunt vividly portrayed on the screen without digital fudging, too real for comfort. Fans of Skippy be warned. A powerful if exploitive film, notable in our cinema history and still packing a wallop today. Featuring significant actors of the era, sadly not all have survived like the newly restored print. As they say, immortality is film.

John Bale

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