Wake in Fright (1971)
Average Rating: 8.6/10
Reviews Counted: 29
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 9/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 1,677
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Movie Info
Awe-inspiring, brutal and stunning, Wake in Fright is 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, as his one night stretches to five, he plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at
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Cast
-
Gary Bond
John Grant -
Donald Pleasence
Doc Tydon -
Chips Rafferty
Jock Crawford -
Sylvia Kay
Janette Hynes -
Jack Thompson
Dick -
Al Thomas
Tim Hynes -
Peter Whittle
Joe -
John Meillon
Charlie -
John Armstrong
Atkins -
Slim de Grey
Jarvis -
Maggie Dence
Receptionist -
Norman Erskine
Joe the Cook -
Buster Fiddess
Charlie Jones -
Tex Foote
Stubbs -
Nancy Knudsen
Robyn -
Dawn Lake
Joyce -
Harry Lawrence
Higgins -
Bob McDarra
Pig Eyes -
Owen Moase
1st Controller -
John Dalleen
2nd Controller -
Colin Hughes
Stockman -
Mark "Jacko" Jackson
Van Driver -
Carlo Marchini
Poker Player -
Liam Reynolds
Miner
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All Critics (29) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (30) | Rotten (0) | DVD (1)
Wake in Fright is essential viewing for anyone interested in the roots of male violence.
Top CriticA Conradian parable of a man succumbing to the wild, the film is remarkable for its raw, pointed dithe suggests, and you'll find the beast concealed behind the mask of propriety.
It is powerful, genuinely shocking and rather amazing.
Several decades later, it still chills.
"Wake in Fright" is true horror.
"Wake in Fright" is a monster movie, and the monster is us.
This tale of sun-baked savagery has lost little of its audacity or ferocity while it languished unseen.
The raw, sweaty 1971 film is not a pretty portrayal of life in the outback, where men are crude, hard-drinking mates with no ambition beyond rough-house fun...
Image Entertainment presents Ted Kotcheff's rediscovered near-masterpiece of disjointed identity in the Australian outback with plenty of extras and a solid transfer befitting a lost classic.
Brutal, but in a deceptively causal manner, Wake in Fright submits one the sharpest depictions of Outback life I've come into contact with, imagining the vast land as a sun-baked prison from which there is no escape.
A movie that shows us plenty of unsettling stuff but also knows that what viewers imagine is much more disturbing than what any movie can show.
Animal lovers, beware.
This outrageously overlooked masterpiece is a wake-up call to film scholars who will now have to rethink what came first ‒ this film or Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs," which basically charts the same territory?
A neglected gem.
"Wake in Fright" works both as an early instance of "Ozploitation" cinema and as a harsh critique of Australian colonialism and the absurdity of trying to bring so-called civilization to this vast arid wilderness.
Kotcheff, working from a novel adapted by Modesty Blaise screenwriter Evan Jones, ratchets up the sick humor and ghastly ribaldry to nail-biting heights.
Orchestrates landscape, music, demonic faces, and lots of blood, sweat, and vomit into a stark bacchanalia of men having fun.
In some ways "Wake in Fright" is like an Australian "Deliverance," except this is one man's journey and he participates in the debauchery and savagery.
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Foreign Titles
- Wake in Fright (DE)
- Wake in Fright (UK)
