Ye Gods, what a strange film. If you haven't yet seen this film (as I hadn't until a few days ago), seek it out and make a date. Truly disturbing, it tells the story **SPOILERS FROM HERE** of John Grant, a teacher at a small village school who decides to visit his girlfriend in Sydney. On the way, he stops off for one night (he thinks) in 'the Yabba' a town inhabited by some rather over-friendly people who force alcohol on him and virtually control his life. They are his 'mates' whether he likes it or not. As he has lost every cent in the local gambling den, he has no way out and nowhere to stay except at the homes of these hard-drinking troglodytes, and in a short time he is just as bad as any of them and spends his days in an alcoholic haze. Is there any end to this hell on Earth? I suppose this film sets out to show how our sheen of civilization hides our inner self under the surface, and how little it takes to corrupt us, especially when we can see no way out. A truly awful but brilliant film. Get yours today.

Being relatively new to world cinema, I find that I often buy films blind, that is with little or no knowledge of the movie prior to my purchase. Such was the case with "Wake in Fright", an Australian film directed by Ted Kotcheff. I bought it solely on the description that it was "one of the seminal" films of modern Australian cinema, alongside "Mad Max" and "Walkabout". I was not disappointed.Gary Bond plays a newly minted schoolteacher, John Grant, sent to the outback to take over a tiny one room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere. It is the last day of the term and school has just let out for the Christmas and New Year break, six weeks of Summer vacation, which Grant plans to spend with his girl back home in Sydney. He hops a train home, but has an overnight layover in Bundanyabba, aka The 'Yabba. One day turns into two and more as Grant falls into an almost Twilight Zone nightmare of drinking and gambling and losing all control. What he discovers along the way will have a lasting impact, to say the least."Wake in Fright" is a brutal watch. It is cruel, and graphic, and lays bare our civilized trappings. I quite liked it. This was a blind buy success. A beautiful, yet difficult, film, with a camera eye view of a culture in one time and place.

im Australian, and this is the best Aussie movie ever made, i love it, its so unsettling, i cant believe it was made in 1971, as it has not aged one bit, i have read that the candian director ted kotcheff has said it is his best film. he directs this movie in a way, that shows Australia in a light that is not seen very often, i don't think a lot of people in the Australian film industry liked this movie when it came out, the movie has been very hard to get, until the last 10 years, it is now considered a cult classic. im 36 and can remember chasing this movie down when i was in my early 20's, i couldn't stand the rambo movies, but was told that first blood was different, and it sure was, i was really impressed, and could not believe how such a great movie could spawn such crap. so i looked up the director and thats how i found wake in fright...........it all made sense then. kotcheff uses Australia as another medium for horror, great film making. it would be great too see some more Aussie films like this one. please no more WOLF CREEK........

Wake in Fright is about a part of Australia that seems to have been clean forgotten. It is a snapshot of a history and life that was swept under a rug, largely due to the colonisation of the country. Very few Australians will be familiar with the Outback aside from a vague familiarity, nor will they be aware of the threateningly machismo life portrayed in Wake in Fright, but it is a life that does exist, far beyond the fringes of the city, in the hauntingly beautiful Outback. The narrative is based on a book of the same time, about a schoolteacher from the city who finds himself in rural Australia doing teaching work for money. During his stay, he ends up in a landlocked, isolated town in the barren Australian desert colloquially called the "Yabba". The primitive way of life here initially floors the well-to-do citizen, but the town and strips back his polished city exterior. The undoing of a polite, cultured gentleman at the hands of derelict desert folk is actually one of the most disturbing aspects of this film. I kept thinking that this man (John is his name) was going to fall victim to a horrible act of violence by the group of eccentric, predominantly wasted townspeople. But instead, the film takes a different route, a far more disturbing one, and places John at the centre of the depravity. He does not fall victim to their behaviour, rather he participates in it until it ravages him almost to the point of no return. The shred of credibility and decency that John has left sees him flee the town. He has had a taste of a more simplistic, animalistic, impulsive existence, but the city life has not allowed him to fully amalgamate himself within this recklessly masculine crowd.The film is masterfully well made. The scrumptious, beautiful colours and settings of the Outback are so rich and bare that they almost become surreal. Director Ted Kotcheff isn't the first person to see the Outback as a foreboding and menacing place, but he has probably helped solidified this view in one of the most memorable ways. The performances are all excellent and you wouldn't know Donald Pleasance is a British veteran actor, because he has got the role of a grubby small town man down to a tee. In fact, all of the actors who portrayed the inhabitants of the Yabba really do seem like they were plucked off the street, they have a naturalism that compliments the film and makes it all the more frightening. Brian West, the cinematographer, deserves much credit too. The heat of the Australian summer is so palpable and raw that it feels as though you are there, in those ramshackle pubs, with sweat from your forehead dripping into your beer (which is almost never empty thanks to the "hospitable" locals). It is such a visceral, often menacing and gut-wrenching experience.I highly recommend this film. It really is incomparable to anything I've ever seen. It isn't really a commonplace thriller, but rather a drama about a way of life that has been forgotten, in favour of a more polished existence. Australia is a fascinating country because it is home to both the city and the rural, timeless outback... very contradictory realities. But sometimes when these very alternate ways of existence meet, chaos ensues. The result is intoxicating.