Andrew reviews the cult film, Wake In Fright.
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| "I think there's something wrong with this water!" |
Alcohol is a curious spirit. It can either bring
great joy to a splendid social occasion or spell doom for those who don't know
where the party ends and hell begins. The saying “Too much of a good thing can
be dangerous when abused” is hardly new or revelatory. While the subject of
alcoholism is one which has been investigated by comedies and dramas throughout
the century of film, the stance on its nature is usually seen in purely black
and white terms, either all good or bad.
If you mention drinking movies to people, most will refer to The Big
Lebowski, Beerfest, Barfly, or most recently, The World's
End. Few, however, will recall this
nearly forever-lost Australian horror show about a well-to-do's lost weekend in
the depths of beer and dust, Wake in Fright.
Recently restored from almost certain death by the
Australian National Film and Sound Archive, Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (First
Blood) tells the story of John Grant (Gary Bond), a young schoolteacher
bonded to the barren desert landscape of Tiboonda. The film takes place during
Christmas, with nothing but the heat of eternal summer to exacerbate the
metaphor of the outback as hell. In transition and tired of the trappings of
his locale, he makes a pit stop in the small, roughneck town of
Bundayabba, hoping to have a drink before his flight back to Sydney and the
arms of his beautiful girlfriend.
Here he meets Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty in his
final role), the town sheriff and gatekeeper of what will soon become the booze
addled landscape where John Grant resides. Loaded with more beers than he can
handle, Grant is turned loose upon the local gambling game, Two-Up. Within
seconds, Grant has loses all his money. Trapped within “The Yabba,” he quickly
descends deep into Hell as he mingles with hard drinkers and begins to lose his
sense of self.
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| "Wait til they find out Gwyneth Paltrow's head is in this suitcase." |
Unlike other downward spiral films that depict
their protagonists sliding down the slippery slope of self destruction, Wake
in Fright is genuinely shocking for its nonjudgmental look at Australian
alcoholism and the hardened, crusty life of the barren outback. In one
notorious sequence, Grant is amid a group of rednecks armed with rifles, led by
the mercurial Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance in his wildest role yet), and the
band goes kangaroo hunting. The film casually mixes footage of the actors with
that of a real kangaroo hunt. Animal rights activists will no doubt be up in
arms over these scenes of kangaroos being shot to death, and there's one
particularly unsettling sequence featuring one of the rednecks wrestling with a
real kangaroo before ending the fight gruesomely.
Adding to the controversy was Australia's
rejection of Kotcheff's portrayal of society as a culture with alcohol flowing
through its veins instead of blood. It's not without a sense of irony that in
the years since, Australia has since gone to great lengths to preserve the film
and regards it as the birth of Australian cinema. For all intents and purposes,
Wake in Fright was the first outback film that showed you can make an
interesting and lasting piece set in the dusty and gritty landscape.
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| "This is a road to nowhere....." |
The film was released in some territories simply
labeled Outback, and over the years was almost completely forgotten.
When the Australian National Film and
Sound Archive realized that Wake in Fright was worth preserving, film
restoration teams were horrified to find out the last watchable copy of the film
was a damaged theatrical print scheduled for demolition. In the nick of time, Wake
in Fright was rescued from almost certain death and painstakingly restored
as close to the original color scheme as possible. Blu-ray owners will notice
that Wake in Fright isn't the sharpest looking or sounding film in their
collection, and the color scheme has a light yellow-green look, which probably
wasn't inherent in the original masters. If you watch the restoration
demonstration included on the Blu-ray and see firsthand just how deeply damaged
the last remaining copy of the film was, you know the team did the best they
could in bringing this nearly forgotten masterpiece back to life.
Wake in Fright can be interpreted as
either an alcoholic's hellscape, or a notion that deep within the outback, the
only key to survival in this barren terrain is alcohol. Near the end of his
rope, Grant tries once more to reach his intended destination, and gets into an
argument with a local who simply doesn't understand why he won't have a drink
with him. Throughout the film, Grant regards locals with disgust and contempt,
until he soon finds himself sharing rooms with them. In the deserted landscape
of Wake in Fright, and the trappings within its wide open spaces, Grant
soon learns you can either give up and die, or accept the bleak hopelessness of
one's existence in the outback aided by alcohol. You'll think twice about why
you swill down a beer after watching this one.
-Andrew Kotwicki