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Wake in Fright

  • 1971
  • R
  • 1h 49m
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
15K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,625
1,656
Wake in Fright (1971)
The story of John Grant, a bonded teacher who arrives in the rough outback mining town of Bundanyabba planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But his one night stretches to five and he plunges headlong toward his own destruction
Play trailer2:02
5 Videos
99+ Photos
TragedyDramaThriller

After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.

  • Director
    • Ted Kotcheff
  • Writers
    • Evan Jones
    • Kenneth Cook
    • Ted Kotcheff
  • Stars
    • Donald Pleasence
    • Gary Bond
    • Chips Rafferty
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.5/10
    15K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    4,625
    1,656
    • Director
      • Ted Kotcheff
    • Writers
      • Evan Jones
      • Kenneth Cook
      • Ted Kotcheff
    • Stars
      • Donald Pleasence
      • Gary Bond
      • Chips Rafferty
    • 124User reviews
    • 113Critic reviews
    • 85Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination total

    Videos5

    Re-release Version
    Trailer 2:02
    Re-release Version
    Wake in Fright
    Trailer 2:03
    Wake in Fright
    Wake in Fright
    Trailer 2:03
    Wake in Fright
    Wake In Fright: Clip 6
    Clip 1:19
    Wake In Fright: Clip 6
    Wake In Fright: Clip 1
    Clip 1:34
    Wake In Fright: Clip 1
    Wake In Fright: Clip 3
    Clip 2:05
    Wake In Fright: Clip 3

    Photos206

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    Top cast26

    Edit
    Donald Pleasence
    Donald Pleasence
    • Doc Tydon
    Gary Bond
    Gary Bond
    • John Grant
    Chips Rafferty
    Chips Rafferty
    • Jock Crawford
    Sylvia Kay
    Sylvia Kay
    • Janette Hynes
    Jack Thompson
    Jack Thompson
    • Dick
    Peter Whittle
    Peter Whittle
    • Joe
    Al Thomas
    Al Thomas
    • Tim Hynes
    John Meillon
    John Meillon
    • Charlie
    John Armstrong
    • Atkins
    Slim DeGrey
    • Jarvis
    • (as Slim De Grey)
    Maggie Dence
    Maggie Dence
    • Receptionist
    Norman Erskine
    • Joe the Cook
    Owen Moase
    • 1st Controller
    John Dalleen
    • 2nd Controller
    Buster Fiddess
    • Charlie Jones
    Tex Foote
    • Stubbs
    Colin Hughes
    • Stockman
    Jacko Jackson
    • Van Driver
    • Director
      • Ted Kotcheff
    • Writers
      • Evan Jones
      • Kenneth Cook
      • Ted Kotcheff
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews124

    7.515.2K
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    Featured reviews

    8ptb-8

    too true, too true.

    WAKE IN FRIGHT is also known Internationally as OUTBACK. Released to quite a furore in Oz in 1972, I saw it as a teenager and was not unshaken believing that it was all too true. The absolutely brutal sunbaked world of the inland 'scrub' is unflinchingly shown for every part of it's harsh reality. The bozo behavior of local men lubricated with endless alcohol and cruel boredom gets a mighty serve as well. A lot of media and tourist execs of the time were suitably outraged as were the conservative older establishment, and there were opposing films made to soften the blow (SUNSTRUCK, for example). However, WAKE IN FRIGHT is a major achievement as is Roeg's equally devastating WALKABOUT made around the same time. Recently THE TRACKER and RABBIT PROOF FENCE go into the same cinematic territory and deliver equally pungent views. WAKE IN FRIGHT will soon stand among the greats of Australian international cinema and rightfully so. A DVD release and a cinema reissue apparently is keenly awaited.
    9Philby-3

    Under the weather down under

    Kenneth Cook was posted as a young man by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (our state-owned broadcaster) to the NSW outback mining town of Broken Hill in the early 1950s. This experience provided the basis for his scarifying first novel, "Wake in Fright", published in 1960. In the novel, Gary, a young schoolteacher bonded to the State Education Department to teach in a desolate desert whistle stop, visits "Bundayabba" (Broken Hill) on his way back to Sydney, surf and girlfriend for the vacation, loses all his money in a two-up game in a desperate attempt to pay off his bond and descends into drunkenness and depravity with the friendly locals, who all appear to be carrying on as they normally do.

    This film was made from the novel in 1970 by a production company hitherto associated with light TV entertainment. The then fairly young Canadian director, Ted Kotchoff, with a couple of foreign leads, Donald Pleasance and Gary Bond, was quite happy to accept Cook's ugly Australians as his local characters and his parody of "mateship" as the social cement binding them together. The dialogue may be spare but the editing (by Tony Buckley) is great, and we are right inside Gary's head as he loses it.

    I saw this movie when it first came out in New Zealand, where it passed almost without comment. Australian audiences did not flock to see it, and the general critical reaction was that it was too confronting. Nearly 40 years later, restored by the Australian Film Archive, it is a well-made classic which still has plenty of punch. Gary Bond as the hapless schoolteacher is very convincing. Chips Rafferty as the local policeman with a pragmatic approach to enforcing the law exudes a low-level air of menace. Donald Pleasance as "Doc" the alcoholic ex-doctor who leads Gary astray is not so much menacing as over the top, but very amusing all the same. The rest of the cast are suitably ocker.

    Much has changed in the outback since the 1950s. Most of the people you rub up against in the bars of mining towns are likely to be from somewhere else, and you'd be lucky to hear those harsh bush accents. Broken Hill has shrunk a bit and is now a pretty quiet place. The Education Department no longer goes in for bush slavery - this is no more than an historical portrait. Yet many city dwellers still see the outback as Gary sees it – a place full of drunken homoerotic dickheads who abuse their environment, treat women like public conveniences and whose idea of mateship is to keep their mates drunk. "Wake in Fright" is best seen as very vivid fiction, a horror movie in fact. I don't think Kenneth Cook set out to write non-fiction. Neither was Ted Kotchoff trying to make a documentary. But, with the aid of several good actors and a host of authentic extras he created such a realistic atmosphere that many viewers were misled.

    The film, which launched the career of Jack Thomson for one, is said to have given the Australian film industry a boost, even though few saw it. Certainly some fine films followed ; "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "The Getting of Wisdom", "The Devil's Playground", "The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith" for example. But history prevailed – modern Australia was not yet ready to film.
    OptikNerve

    Made In Australia

    I noted that Speen and some other media commentators think that 'Wake in Fright' was a foreign product that just happened to be made here in Oz.

    My father was approached by EMI in 1967 or there abouts. The introduction of colour TV in the US had created a demand for weekly films on the networks, and they were rapidly exhausting the supply of colour films (colour only became the norm post WWII).

    EMI was approaching media companies around the world to produce films for cinema release. The two caveats were that the films must contain at least one US marqee name (a recognisable draw card), and the rights for US TV must be given to EMI. All other matter of production were a matter for locals.

    My father - who was running a large company in OZ (which had a recording arm) and had been involved in the start of TV, signed up.

    The result were to very different films. "Squeeze a Flower" with Walter Chiari (who had starred in 'They're a Weird Mob' two years earlier) with Jack Albertson as the US star, and 'Wake in Fright' with Donald Pleasance as the star.

    They utilised largely Oz casts, largely Oz crew and were moderately successful financially (from the Oz viewpoint, I don't know how EMI faired). Even Dave Allen who many now think of as an English or Irish star was the host of 'In Sydney Tonight' at the time (the Harbourside version of Graham Kennedies 'In Melbourne Tonight').

    The follow on from this scheme of EMI was the beginings of TV features - specifically filmed for TV as feature films. But "Squeeze a Flower" and "Wake in Fright" were Oz films created for a TV market.

    The success of 'Wake in Fright'and 'Walkabout' at the same time, along with the support of the Gorton Government for backing the new film push, started the ball rolling for Oz film's renaissance.

    Cheers
    9Coventry

    Sweet Home Bundanyabba, where the skies are grim.

    "Outback" is unlike any other film ever made and quite impossible to categorize. If the movie taught me anything at all, it's that the Aussies can drink seriously hard and loads of it. They even drink till they pass out and then immediately open another can when they come to their senses again. I thought only Belgians did that. You cannot possibly count the amount of beer cans and bottles that are consumed in this film and the most repeated line of text/monologue is without a doubt: "C'mon mate, let's have a drink then". Based on the novel by Kenneth Cook, "Outback" tells the story of a young school teacher visiting the little outback community of Bundanyabba, where the local population is so hospitable and acts so familiar it becomes truly disturbing. They fill their days with drinking, gambling, getting involved in bar fights, drinking again, kangaroo hunting and drinking some more. John initially disapproves their savage habits and looks somewhat down upon the villagers, but slowly and gradually he becomes one of them as he wastes his entire year salary on booze and primitive roulette games. "Outback" is very slow-paced and moody. Sometimes you can literally taste the copious amounts of liquor and experience the heat of the Aussie summer. The noticeable heat, together with the feeling pure geographical isolation truly makes the film disturbing and uncomfortable as hell. "Outback" works effectively as psychological drama but even more as the non-fictional portrait about a society that is largely unknown and unspoken of. The footage of the kangaroo hunting trip is haunting and very, very depressing. I was really relieved when, during the end credits, a message appeared on the screen to state that no real kangaroos were harmed during the production. The film mostly benefices from astonishingly mesmerizing photography, superb music and Ted Kotcheff's solid direction. The versatile and brilliant actor Donald Pleasance is even convincing as an Aussie drunkard and the rest of the relatively unknown cast delivers great performances as well. This is one of them unique movies you only encounter a couple of times in a lifetime, but it's incredibly obscure so if you find a copy treasure it. So mate … shall we have a beer then?
    10Sturgeon54

    Quite Possibly The Most Realistic Film I've Ever Seen

    The first time I watched this, I really didn't know what to make of it; it was so different from any other film I had ever seen. It seemed as if it was filmed with virtually no budget, the sets and atmosphere were completely dingy, the setting and much of the language was foreign to me, and it felt like a kind of homemade independent film. However, upon a second viewing, I see it for the richly-textured masterpiece that it is, and for the awesome attention to detail that must have gone into it which I had taken for granted the first time.

    There have been other films with similar subject matter in alternate settings of cultured men reduced to a kind of forgotten primitivity, but I think the thing that sets this movie apart is the fact that director Ted Kotcheff remains completely neutral toward all of the characters - both the cultured schoolteacher as well as the locals. By the end of the film, no character remains unscathed, and yet no character is completely without sympathy, either. It must be quite difficult for a director to remain impartial, especially when most stories require audience sympathy for a protagonist versus an antagonist for story momentum. This impartiality establishes an incredible realism in the film which is difficult to shake off. Here, as in life, things just happen to the main character organically - whether there is any rhyme, reason, or moral to any of it is the complete burden of the audience to figure out.

    Another key aspect to the film is its universality. Most people would like to believe that in the modern world, and especially a modern country such as Australia or the U.S, that such ugly colloquial primitivity has been largely purged from polite society, but they would be quite wrong. I can equate some of my own personal experiences with those of the main character in this film, and so felt an uncomfortable recognition as I was watching this. Moroever, virtually every scene in the film I could envision actually occurring - something I cannot say about any other I can think of. Sam Peckinpah's filmic explorations of perverse masculinity, some of Samuel Fuller's work, and "Deliverance" are the only movies that achieve something close to the kind of effect this movie has, and even Peckinpah felt the need to resort to flashy cinematic stylistics to get his points across.

    This movie has not aged one bit, and probably never will. It is a tragedy that it has all but disappeared even in its own country of Australia. Director Kotcheff displayed an amazing early talent; it is too bad that his career never reached another peak like this - even in "First Blood" and "Uncommon Valor" - two of his other films with similar themes. And that the same man ended up directing "Weekend at Bernie's" and episodes of "Zalman King's Red Shoe Diaries"!!! The world is a crazy place, and one need only watch this film to realize this fact.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      This film went out of circulation for many years, in large part due to the dissolution of the two production companies involved: NLT Productions was liquidated soon after its failed release, and Group W's assets were absorbed by CBS in 1999. As a result, the original film and sound elements went missing, sparking an international search. After nearly three years search, in 2002, the film's editor Anthony Buckley tracked the film down to CBS' Iron Mountain archives in Pittsburgh, where an initial 60 cans of film were found in a shipping container marked "For Destruction". By September 2004, a further 263 cans - several of which contained the original camera negative - were recovered from the vaults, allowing for a full digital restoration.
    • Goofs
      As Grant leaves the hotel bar in Tiboonda, he takes one last swig of beer - leaving his glass half full. In the next shot, when the camera focuses on the interior of the bar, his glass is now empty.
    • Quotes

      Dick: [referring to John Grant] What's the matter with him? He'd rather talk to a woman than drink?

      Tim Hynes: Schoolteacher.

      Dick: Oh.

    • Crazy credits
      [Australian version] PRODUCERS' NOTE: The hunting scenes depicted in this film were taken during an actual kangaroo hunt by professional licensed hunters. For this reason and because the survival of the Australian kangaroo is seriously threatened, these scenes were shown uncut after consultation with the leading animal welfare organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom.

      [International version] PRODUCERS' NOTE: Photography of the hunting scenes in this film took place during an actual kangaroo hunt conducted by licensed professional hunters. No kangaroos were killed expressly for this motion picture. Because the survival of the Australian kangaroo is seriously threatened these scenes were included with approval of leading animal welfare organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom.
    • Alternate versions
      The international TV version that, until 2009, replaced the uncut Australian version in circulation, runs approximately 101 minutes (97 minutes on most copies due to NTSC to PAL conversion), roughly eight minutes shorter than the original. The changes are as follows:
      • When John awakens the morning after the two-up game, an alternate take of the scene is used: instead of being naked, he is wearing underpants.
      • When Janette is seducing John, the scene fades to black when she nuzzles her head against his groin and cuts to Doc's handstand. In the original, she then unbuttons her dress and kisses John, who drunkenly vomits; disappointed, she wipes his face and leads him back to the house.
      • The entirety of John's conversation with Doc outside his shack is missing.
      • The daytime kangaroo hunt lacks most of the brief scene in which Doc cuts off a kangaroo's testicles, and only shows the shot of Joe handing his knife to Doc before cutting to John's bemused close-up.
      • The night-time kangaroo hunt is severely truncated: only the first two kills are shown, and prior to the sequence in which Joe fights the one-eyed kangaroo, the sequence consists entirely of close-ups of the actors firing at the screen. Similarly, the shot of Joe slashing the kangaroo's throat and a lingering shot of kangaroo carcasses post-carnage are cut.
      • During the bush pub fight, Joe's line "You bastard!" is cut, as is Doc rising from his chair saying "You bloody bastards!"; Doc's further utterances of the phrase in this scene are cross-faded so that only the first vowel is heard.
      • After Doc grabs John by the neck during their post-hunt "tryst", the scene fades to white when the ceiling lamp swings toward the screen and cuts to the following morning, thereby eliminating Doc's suggestive mounting of John (curiously, the part of this scene featured during the montage of John's mental breakdown remains intact).
      • The following have been removed from the montage of John's mental breakdown: Doc spitting beer into Janette's mouth; Doc playfully slapping Janette; John breaking into a run; both shots of Doc having sex with Robyn. John Scott's music is cross-faded over the penultimate crescendo so that the final sting is still synchronized with the reversed shot of the two-up pennies over Doc's eyes, although much of Dick, Joe and the two-up patrons' howling laughter is eliminated as a result.
    • Connections
      Edited into Terror Nullius (2018)
    • Soundtracks
      She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
      (uncredited)

      Traditional, based on a Negro spiritual song known as "When the Chariot Comes"

      Sung by passengers on the train

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    FAQ24

    • How long is Wake in Fright?Powered by Alexa
    • Is this movie based on a book?
    • Were real kangaroos killed during the making of the film?
    • Did Doc and John have a homosexual encounter?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 9, 1971 (Australia)
    • Country of origin
      • Australia
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Outback
    • Filming locations
      • Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia
    • Production company
      • NLT Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • A$800,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $50,394
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $6,761
      • Oct 7, 2012
    • Gross worldwide
      • $242,751
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 49 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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