Well, this was a rather unsettling watch. Granted, it’s certainly not the most uncomfortable film I’ve ever watched, but it certainly made me feel the craziness of outback living. In a way, you could consider it the Australian Deliverance, though it actually predates Deliverance by a year, and it was actually “lost” for many years after bombing at the box office. It’s a rather divisive film, with a lot of that division stemming from a certain scene that would certainly test someone’s sensibilities. Overall, though, I found it to be rather effective at what it wanted to do, even if I am a bit uncertain about some of the choices made, namely with the scene I mentioned. Well, let’s get into the story, and my review as a whole, so that you can judge for yourself.
The film follows John Grant, a teacher who has been sent around to various teaching locations on some sot of bond agreement. He feels disgruntled from all this, wishing that he could be back in Sydney with the woman he loves. He manages to get a short reprieve during the Christmas season, and plans to go visit her, but he first has to meet a connection in Bundanyabba, a backwater (or back-desert, more accurately) mining town. He meets with the local sheriff, who offers him a drink and asks him about himself. The sheriff seems a friendly sort, but John isn’t too pleased with the general roughness of the townsfolk and clearly doesn’t want to be there. However, the sheriff ends up showing him a gambling ring going on in the back of the bar, which essentially works like a coin toss except with two coins (you bet on heads or tails, and if the coins come up with two on one side, that side wins). John tries out the game and manages to win a solid amount. However, he gets to thinking that, if he wins just one more time, he can get out of the teaching business for good. As you would expect, he winds up losing all his money, and is now stranded in “The Yabba,” unable to afford a plane ticket. Somewhat fortunately, he meets a man named Tim, who offers to help him out and takes John to his house. There, he meets Janette, Tim’s daughter, and his buddies Dick and Joe, as well as “The Doc,” a local doctor that he’s encountered at the bar last night. The men of the group basically have an all-day drinking binge, which John joins in on, but he seems to hit it off with Janette, who ends up taking him out into the brush for “an intimate moment.” However, John throws up, due to all the beer he’s drunk, which basically kills the mood. Later, the Doc takes John home with him, and informs him that Janette has slept with practically everyone. He explains that the two of them (Doc and Janette) have something of a relationship, but nothing truly set in stone. He feels that people like him and Janette don’t belong in the middle class “normal” world, which is actually where the Doc came from, but ultimately left due to drinking problems and an unfitting character. John isn’t entirely on board with this way of life, but seems to be slowly getting into it, especially when Dick and Joe take him and Doc on a kangaroo hunt. The hunt starts in the day and leads into the night, and gradually devolves into a rather barbaric display, with bloody kangaroo carcasses and even throat slitting. The guys encourage John to go up and do the latter to one of the kangaroos, but when John grabs the roo by the tail, he suddenly gives in to the whirlwind of emotions and aggression he’s been feeling and stabs the kangaroo to death. The group later go on to drunkenly destroy a local pub and get into wrestling fist fights with each other, though John is passed out for most of it. When John and Doc finally return home, their drunken and aggressive states result in an “unintended moment of intimacy” between the two. When John wakes up the next morning, he realizes what’s happened, which leaves him so repulsed that he flees the house and desperately tries to find some way, any way, he can escape this outback hellscape. Will John ever make it back to Sydney? As always, that’s up for you to see.
As I said before, this film does do a good job in making you feel uncomfortable. Starting with the gambling scene, there is a recurring sense of overwhelming, chaotic tension that shows up throughout the film, starting with a moment where John seems to think that everyone in the gambling den is laughing at him (even though they’re all just having a good time). This frenzied style of presentation appears several times, such as during the drunken kegger at Tim’s house, John’s killing of the kangaroo, and John and Doc’s little “mishap.” The interesting thing is that, while some films might have done this as a way to paint the townsfolk as evil or something along those lines, ultimately, this perception is mostly born from the protagonist himself. John is a middle-class guy who clearly believes in some level of refinement or class and has clearly never dealt with these sorts of folks before. He seems to treat them with a certain aversion, like he sees them as creepy, suspicious, or even beneath him. However, he actually starts finding himself enjoying some of what they do, such as the gambling, the binge-drinking, and even the uncivilized hunting. Rather than coming to better understand their culture and see that he’s not as distinguished as he thinks he is, he instead seems to view it as if they’re sucking him in, like a hive-mind that’s trying to turn him into them. Now, that’s not to say that the film is entirely on the side of the outbackers. After all, bloody kangaroo hunting, property destruction, and drunken sexual encounters are not exactly the most wonderful or moralistic things one can do. The outbackers live a much “freer” life than those in polite society, but with that freedom comes an ugly chaos. In general, though, the townspeople never do anything bad to John, at least not intentionally. They do goad him into over-drinking and stabbing the kangaroos to death, but to them it’s just a bonding thing more than anything else. Now, John and Doc’s encounter is definitely more on the really uncomfortable side, especially with the way it’s shot suggesting a more “dominating” aspect to the act, but I think that’s another example of John’s perception, or more so the film playing with the audience. What actually ends up occurring in the scene really comes across more like a drunken mistake than anything else, the film just makes you feel as though it’s something even worse through its presentation. It still doesn’t make what happened great or right, but it is at least more understandable than if Doc had just blatantly forced himself on John. I think that’s ultimately the idea of the film: while this sort of backwater living isn’t perfect or immune to criticism, it doesn’t do any good to look down on these people, especially when many of us are just as capable of the sorts of things we abhor from these people. In that way, I think this film did a very good job at getting this idea across, as well as just portraying outback life in general (some of the heat waves seen during John’s attempt to leave are just as delirium-inducing as the folks themselves). If anything, it might have portrayed the outback a little too well, as just as many audience members derided the film for being “inaccurate” as those that praised it for being accurate. In addition to this, the other big contention point was the kangaroo hunt, which for the most part, wasn’t faked. The crew actually hired licensed hunters to pull of this sequence, but it went way further than they expected, with the hunters getting just as blitzed as the characters in the film. All of the bloodied kangaroos you see in the film are real, and when they hit a kangaroo with a car, they actually hit it with a car (though I’m not sure if the throat-slitting and stabbing were real, given how they shot those scenes a bit ambiguously). This is going to be a big contention point for many folks that might want to watch this film. Some may be okay with it in its own context, especially since they have put a note at the end of the film that states that they’ve left the scene in as a message against the endangerment of Australian kangaroos. However, the fact that they actually killed kangaroos for the film is definitely going to be an outrage for many others. So, I wanted to explain this aspect of the film as sort of a disclaimer. While I do still think that it’s a good film overall, I don’t believe it’s right to kill animals for a film, so I’m not pleased that they chose to go that route. It’s sadly a black mark on an otherwise good movie. Before I wrap up, I do want to say that I’ve speculated that either the kangaroo killing, the outback portrayal, or both might’ve led to it being a “lost” film. I have no evidence for this, but apparently, the master copy was lost for many years until it was found in a warehouse by the film’s editor in a crate labelled for destruction. I have to wonder if somehow someone who was offended by the film managed to get their hands on this reel and tried to bury it so that it couldn’t be shown again (or at least in its original form, as it was edited later). I can’t prove this, but it is interesting to think about
In the end, Wake in Fright is a good movie that gets its point across well, even if I don’t agree with every choice, they made in doing so. I do recommend it, though with caution, depending on your sensibilities or thoughts on the animal death matter, and whatever you may feel about it, I am at least glad that this film is able to be preserved now. It’s crazy how something made as late as the 70’s can go missing like that, but stranger things have happened (and, again, I have my theories). Anyway, spend some time in the outback, meet the locals, but remember to go with the flow if you can, because if not, you’ll Wake in Fright from many a sleepless night.