Review #782: 'Wake in Fright' (1971)

One of the pioneering films of the Australian New Wave, Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright was released in 1971 to widespread critical acclaim after a number of successful festival screenings. It was then lost for nearly 40 years, found by the film's editor Anthony Buckley in a bin marked 'for destruction'. The New Wave, which eventually gave birth to Ozploitation, showed polar opposite views of Australia. The likes of Peter Weir and Nicholas Roeg portrayed the country's mystical, spiritual beauty, while movies like Mad Dog Morgan (1976) and Mad Max (1979) exploited the country's rough-and-tumble reputation.

Wake in Fright is somewhere in between - a nightmarish journey into the heart of man's primitive instincts, and into a country in which the inhabitants of back-road towns welcome you with aggressive hospitality. Yet there's something oddly alluring about the sweaty, dusty streets of Bundanyabba ('The Yabba') and it's collection of disturbingly eccentric gamblers and alcoholics. Gary Bond's mild-mannered schoolteacher, John Grant, finds himself in The Yabba on route to Sydney to see his girlfriend, but circumstance and insistence means he can't get out. It's simple-minded townsfolk and excessive beer-swilling attitudes repulse him, but the animal inside of him becomes addicted, and he ends up losing all of his money on a simple game of heads-and-tails.

God bless the persistence of Anthony Buckley, as Wake in Fright is a terrifying masterpiece. At times, it's incredibly difficult to watch. It's a relentless barrage of warm beer, unbearable heat and extreme masculinity, where the only cure to a head-pounding hangover is to gulp more warm beer. Grant meets Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence - never better), an alcoholic doctor who left his home and job to take residence in the Yabba, a place where his drunken, often violent behaviour is not only accepted, but gives him a social standing, and his idiosyncrasies are celebrated. Doc is Grant's mirror-image, or at least an image of who he could become if he doesn't manage to leave the hell-hole. Doc doesn't need money to survive, he lives on kangaroo stew and favours.

Most of the film's controversy stems from the infamous kangaroo hunt, in which many of the creatures are blasted apart by Doc, Grant, and two other men. This scene is less stomach-churning than the scenes in Cannibal Holocaust (1980), but is a hundred times more unnerving. But there's an odd beauty to the scene, especially when one of the group decides to take one on with a knife in a thrilling encounter. And that sums Wake in Fright up, its utterly repellent, yet you can't take your eyes away. The Yabba's inhabitants celebrate everything with a drink, gulp it down like there's no tomorrow, and are completely perplexed if you refuse. It's ugly, brutal stuff about man's potential for ugliness and brutality, but also a commentary on man's natural primal urges. I now have three reasons never to visit Australia - spider, snakes, and The Yabba.


Directed by: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay, Jack Thompson
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie