User Reviews

I had the great good fortune to obtain a ticket for a one-time-only screening of Wake In Fright (aka Outback) at the 2009 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. I had heard of the film and read reviews of it, but it had receded from my memory before I noticed it in the festival program. Ted Kotcheff was known to me as the talented Canadian director of such artful Canadian films as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) and subversive Hollywood offerings like North Dallas Forty (1979) but I had not connected him to WIF.

The screening was part of TIFF's Discussions series, which features an extended, moderated Q&A after the film. I believe this one ran at least one hour, and was very informative and interesting. But first the film.

Briefly, school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) is contracted by the government to teach in a one-room schoolhouse in Australia's primitive Outback. The school year ends and Grant thankfully boards the train for a six week summer vacation. But he loses all his money when drawn into a stupid gambling contest in the first settlement the train reaches. He is thus just as helpless and alone as any civilized man among dangerous savages (think The Naked Prey with drunk, horny rednecks chasing the titular hero.) Grant first meets the local lawman Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty) who appears unconcerned with the pervasive drunkenness in his community. He insists they get sloshed together, and unwittingly leads him to the gamblers, who play a simple-minded game of heads or tails with two coins. Grant wins at first, but then loses it all. Destitute, he has no choice but to accept the sodden hospitality of the locals. We get the idea (via excellent acting by Mr. Bond) that the educated young man is not happy being at the mercy of these lower-class savages. But their brutish acting-out is partially accounted for (but NOT excused) by the scarcity of sex -- whatever each of these man-children desires, men or women, they just aren't getting enough! An excellent sequence in the film is the attempted seduction of Grant by Janette Hynes (Sylvia Kay), daughter of one of Grant's erstwhile "mates." Loneliness, desperation and sexual frustration are etched in her face, and she leads Grant out of a drunken party for a walk, intending to do the dirty literally in the dirt, but her intended vomits up one of the 1,000 or so beers he downs in the film. Her wretchedness as she flees sobbing back to her father's house is just devastating.

The most controversial scenes in the film were shot during actual kangaroo hunts, conducted at the time with no decent regulation, for the benefit of foreign pet food companies. Drunk as lords, the Aussie crew speed through the desert in a "Mad Max" hunting truck, shooting every poor 'roo they can find. In the grisly climax, Grant agrees to kill an animal with a knife and his bare hands.

Later, seriously alcoholic 'Doc' Tydon (the great Donald Pleasence, at the peak of his brilliance) sexually assaults the (finally) unconscious Grant in his filthy hovel. Grant "wakes in fright" to find the good Doc asleep on the floor, naked except for a woman's baby doll nightie. "Gay panic" ensues, and after an unsuccessful attempt to hitchhike out of the town, he returns to the cabin with his kangaroo rifle and confused intentions. (SPOILER) 'Doc' returns, but Grant turns the rifle on himself and fires. He awakes in a hospital bed, and signs a statement saying the shooting was an accident. He is discharged just in time to return to his school house.

At the Q&A we learned some interesting facts: The film was shot on location in a small Aussie town, and the bar, gambling hall, the Hynes ranch, the schoolhouse, etc. are real, and together with the stark cinematography impart a sense of one of those faintly recalled nightmares that seem like a true occurrence. Mr. Kotcheff told us he was aiming to create claustrophobia in wide-open spaces, and in my humble opinion he succeeded.

The 'roo hunt was filmed documentary-style at a real hunt. The filmmakers consulted with Australian anti-hunt groups who told them to go ahead, so that the Australian public could see the cruel slaughter for themselves. It's quite sickening -- the hunters amuse themselves by shooting to wound, then watching the bleeding animals jumping about in pain. The killings by knife were simulated, shot in a black-out tent to match the night-time of the documented hunt.

The film was well received by critics at Cannes (and the restored film was re-screened there this year), and the director remembers being told by his hosts that it was an important film for Australians, and that it could only have been made by an unbiased outsider. Its North American release (as Outback) was botched -- perhaps deliberately, since (I suppose) unfettered alcoholism + gay rape + graphic animal slaughter wasn't expected to sell well, even in the cinema's post-60's creative ferment.

Eventually, the film was forgotten and the master negatives misplaced. The film's editor spent two years on his own time and dime tracking it down. He found the reels in a Pittsburgh, PA warehouse, in containers marked for destruction. Restored, remastered and revived, it has met with accolades in Australia, at Cannes, and of course here at TIFF.

Needless to say, I am anxiously awaiting the DVD release!

Initially release as Outback outside of Australia, Canadian filmmaker Ted Kotcheff's brutal psychological horror movie about a young school teacher (Gary Bond) who gets stranded in a remote Australian mining town and plunges headlong toward his own destruction, is one of the most harrowing portrayals of outback life you will ever see. Prepare to be disturbed as he is taken under the wing of alcoholic doctor and resident deviant-philosopher-madman Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance), and a rag tag gang of local degenerates. He goes on a kangaroo hunt (apparently no kangaroos were expressly killed for this motion picture, but that doesn't make it any the less comforting, you will flinch in horror at the brutality of the slaughter), and knocks back staggering quantities of the local grog. Alongside two other Australian movies, Walkabout and Picnic At Hanging Rock, Wake In Fright was nominated for the grand prize at the 24th Cannes Film Festival, but bombed at the Box Office in it's native land. Considered lost after its original negative went missing, it was eventually rediscovered and restored for release in 2009. The movie is also notable for featuring the last onscreen appearance by veteran character actor Chips Rafferty (he died of a heart attack prior to the movies release), and for being the first film with future Australian cinema star Jack Thompson.

Smug and uptight British school teacher John Grant (a fine portrayal by Gary Bond) finds himself stranded in a hellish small town in the Australian outback that's populated by fiercely "friendly" drunken hooligans who eventually push Grant over the edge into madness, despair, and unhindered barbarism.

Director Ted Kotcheff evokes a potently unsettling feeling of isolation and vulnerability from the remote rural region setting, maintains an unsparingly bleak tone throughout, and reveals the darker and more disturbing aspects of the rough'n'ready Aussie male character with jolting starkness and a masterful crafting of a gritty, yet surreal and nightmarish mood. The sharp and observant script by Evan Jones offers a bold and unflinching exploration of the dangers of "aggressive hospitality" and the startling extreme lengths hyper-masculine guys will go to in order to prove and assert a sense of virile potency over everything, with a chilling nocturnal kangaroo hunt rating as the definite shocking highlight. Donald Pleasance gives one of his best and most fearless performances as the educated, but slimy and depraved Doc Tyson, who assumes the role as a kind of insane fallen intellectual mentor to Grant as he descends right into the heart of human darkness. Moreover, there are bang-up contributions from Chips Rafferty as amiable constable Jock Crawford, Sylvia Kay as the forlorn and frustrated Janette Hynes, Jack Thompson as the rowdy Dick, Peter Whittle as the loutish Joe, Al Thomas as the jolly Tim, and John Meillon as affable bartender Charlie. Brian West's crisp picturesque cinematography vividly captures both the severe oppressive heat and suffocating backwoods hamlet atmosphere. A riveting and provocative stunner.

I saw the restored print at Film Forum.

The main reason this is a partial success is because Bond is not a compelling or likable or interesting character. He's bland and it is his ordeal and his change during the ordeal that engaged me in the picture, but most of movie prior to his invitation to a drinking buddy's home is dramatically flat. One could argue that that is the point-- that not much is there, but the sequence in which Bond maniacally talks himself into betting (some of which seems like ADR added after the fact) is clumsy and tells me that I was supposed to have some emotional investment in whether he won or lost his freedom from the school system purgatory in which he was trapped.

The piece really takes off the moment the two big, menacing fellows step into the house and works very well once Bond is relegated to a witness of Donald Pleasance, who has never been better than he is here, maybe not even comparably good.

The hunting scenes are difficult to watch, but it is the wild abandon of the riders after the hunt, the berserk and forced "enjoyment" of their sadism, that is the high point of the movie and quite excellent. The filth and squalor of this presages things like Gummo and the overall tone reminds me of Walkabout, with a dash of Cannibal Holocaust.

It's sort of strange that the film is quite comfortable graphically showing animal death but shies away from depicting any of the implied drunken homosexuality.

Overall, this movie has about 40 really engaging and disturbing minutes, but lacks a compelling lead and ends a little to quaintly to be truly substantial.

This film had apparently been lost for over 30 years before it was found again, it was added into the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I had to see if it was all worth it, directed by Ted Kotcheff (Fun with Dick and Jane, First Blood). Basically in Australia, John Grant (Gary Bond) is a middle-class teacher from the big city who arrives in the rough outback mining town of Bundanyabba, known as "The Yabba". John plans to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney, he has accepted a position at the tiny school in Tiboonda, but John's one night is stretched to five by his own methods. It is through encountering many discomfiting characters, such as medical practitioner "Doc" Tydon (Donald Pleasence) and policeman Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), and a series of alcoholic fuelled nights out, that John causes his own self-destruction. When the alcohol effects fade away there is little left of the original man, John becomes self-loathing trapped in a desolate wasteland, and he contemplates suicide with the one bullet he has left in his rifle, will he get out of it and get back to a sane civilisation? Also starring Sylvia Kay as Janette Hynes, Jack Thompson as Dick, Peter Whittle as Joe, Al Thomas as Tim Hynes and John Meillon as Charlie. Bond as the frustrated teacher going downhill during his time in the small town is good, and Pleasence proves himself a good character actor, this film has been called the "Australian Deliverance", I can see what similarities with the format, the film makes you feel uncomfortable with its disturbing imagery, and you hope desperately the leading character will get out of the downward spiral, a weird but worthwhile thriller. Very good!