A couple of weeks ago,the Alamo Drafthouse hosted a revival of "Wake in Fright" here in Austin. Many of the reviews (both from the US and Austrailia)called it the greatest movie Australia has ever produced. After watching the film, I would have to say that although I enjoyed it somewhat, that epithet is a gross exaggeration.
The film stars Gary Bond (a dead ringer for Peter O'Toole, but lacking O'Toole's talent) as John Grant, a bonded teacher forced to teach in a small outback town when he would rather be in Sydney with his girlfriend or in London working for a newspaper. During Christmas holidays (the middle of summer in the Southern Hemisphere), he gets on a train to the mining town of Bundanyabba (known to locals as "The Yabba") to catch a plane to Sydney. While there, the aggressively friendly locals insist on buying him drinks and get upset when he says he doesn't want to get drunk with them. Eventually, the locals prevail and he winds losing all his money at gambling, forcing to stay in the Yabba for his entire holiday.
During his stay, he is seduced (the film actually calls it rape) by the daughter of one of his local hosts; is taken in by the cultured, educated, but crazed Doc Tydon (played by Donald Pleasance); and is taken on a brutal kangaroo hunt, where he has to prove his masculinity to his ultra-macho companions.
The film--based on the novel by Kenneth Cook--is reasonably well-written and well-directed by Ted Kotcheff (who would find success in the 1980's with "First Blood" and "Weekend at Bernie's"). And the kangaroo hunt is one of the most chilling scenes ever committed to celluloid.
But the movie is also highly flawed: Donald Pleasance is the only actor in the movie who is capable of subtlety and he is also the only one who doesn't give a completely wooden performance. And there are only two major female characters. The first is the "rapist" daughter who is supposed to be young and beautiful but who is played by Sylvia Kay--an average-looking woman in her mid-30's at the time of filming who just happened to be married to Kotcheff. The other major character is Grant's girlfriend who has no lines, but just plays in the surf in a red one-piece suit. None of the female characters has any depth, but are instead just sex robots. And the scene after the kangaroo hunt where the guys trash a bar is needlessly violent and overlong. All of these, combined with the 16mm camera-work, the cheap sets and the cheesy score combine to give this movie the feel of a grind-house flick despite the filmmakers' clear intentions to make a work of artistic importance.
I did enjoy this film for what it was: a better-than-average low-budget drama that foreshadows both "Deliverance" and the "Mad Max" trilogy. But this is hardly the greatest Australian movie ever. Granted, it's better than "Crocodile Dundee", but nowhere near as good as "The Year My Voice Broke", its sequel "Flirting", "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" or anything Peter Weir has done. 7 out of 10.
The film stars Gary Bond (a dead ringer for Peter O'Toole, but lacking O'Toole's talent) as John Grant, a bonded teacher forced to teach in a small outback town when he would rather be in Sydney with his girlfriend or in London working for a newspaper. During Christmas holidays (the middle of summer in the Southern Hemisphere), he gets on a train to the mining town of Bundanyabba (known to locals as "The Yabba") to catch a plane to Sydney. While there, the aggressively friendly locals insist on buying him drinks and get upset when he says he doesn't want to get drunk with them. Eventually, the locals prevail and he winds losing all his money at gambling, forcing to stay in the Yabba for his entire holiday.
During his stay, he is seduced (the film actually calls it rape) by the daughter of one of his local hosts; is taken in by the cultured, educated, but crazed Doc Tydon (played by Donald Pleasance); and is taken on a brutal kangaroo hunt, where he has to prove his masculinity to his ultra-macho companions.
The film--based on the novel by Kenneth Cook--is reasonably well-written and well-directed by Ted Kotcheff (who would find success in the 1980's with "First Blood" and "Weekend at Bernie's"). And the kangaroo hunt is one of the most chilling scenes ever committed to celluloid.
But the movie is also highly flawed: Donald Pleasance is the only actor in the movie who is capable of subtlety and he is also the only one who doesn't give a completely wooden performance. And there are only two major female characters. The first is the "rapist" daughter who is supposed to be young and beautiful but who is played by Sylvia Kay--an average-looking woman in her mid-30's at the time of filming who just happened to be married to Kotcheff. The other major character is Grant's girlfriend who has no lines, but just plays in the surf in a red one-piece suit. None of the female characters has any depth, but are instead just sex robots. And the scene after the kangaroo hunt where the guys trash a bar is needlessly violent and overlong. All of these, combined with the 16mm camera-work, the cheap sets and the cheesy score combine to give this movie the feel of a grind-house flick despite the filmmakers' clear intentions to make a work of artistic importance.
I did enjoy this film for what it was: a better-than-average low-budget drama that foreshadows both "Deliverance" and the "Mad Max" trilogy. But this is hardly the greatest Australian movie ever. Granted, it's better than "Crocodile Dundee", but nowhere near as good as "The Year My Voice Broke", its sequel "Flirting", "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" or anything Peter Weir has done. 7 out of 10.