Andy Howlett Ye Gods, what a strange film. If you haven't yet seen this film (as I hadn't until a few days ago), seek it out and make a date. Truly disturbing, it tells the story **SPOILERS FROM HERE** of John Grant, a teacher at a small village school who decides to visit his girlfriend in Sydney. On the way, he stops off for one night (he thinks) in 'the Yabba' a town inhabited by some rather over-friendly people who force alcohol on him and virtually control his life. They are his 'mates' whether he likes it or not. As he has lost every cent in the local gambling den, he has no way out and nowhere to stay except at the homes of these hard-drinking troglodytes, and in a short time he is just as bad as any of them and spends his days in an alcoholic haze. Is there any end to this hell on Earth? I suppose this film sets out to show how our sheen of civilization hides our inner self under the surface, and how little it takes to corrupt us, especially when we can see no way out. A truly awful but brilliant film. Get yours today.

Fella_shibby I first saw this in 2010 on a DVD. That time i was on a horror movie spree. I came across this title after watching Wolf creek. As a fan of movies based in Outbacks n Badlands n thinking of it being an outback horror i was excited bah this flick. Recently revisited this on a blu ray. The film is based on a 1961 novel of the same name by Kenneth Cook. Well, its not a true horror film but it is genuinely shocking, funny n weird at times. The movie is about a schoolteacher, who is not happy teaching in the middle of the desolate wilderness of the Outback. The opening scene shows beside a railroad track, jus two buildings,a school n a hotel. Both of em in the middle of nowhere. The cinematography is gorgeous, completely sun-soaked (i felt like just wearing a vest like the majority of the characters coz of the heat). The film feels claustrophobic and suffocating, even though the Outback is wide open. It is the end of the school year. The teacher is planning to head to Sydney for his vacation to meet his girlfriend. He lands in a town called The Yabba, an outback town populated by aggressively friendly weirdoes. The town is full of working-class population, primarily white males, outnumbering females, who all are happy drinking their beer in its own exclusive heat-haze bubble of dust and sand, sealed off from the rest of Australian civilisation by endless miles of desert outback emptiness. The teacher loses his money gambling in a weird game and constantly bumps into hard-drinking, hard-living, crude, vicious men. He descends into drunkenness, brutality, rape and a gruesome moonlight hunt where they massacre kangaroos (possibly the most disturbing five minutes). It's hard to watch, but only because it demonstrates the realistic results of human nature. We hav Donald Pleasance playin a doc once again. He is the backbone of this film, a true weirdo. Awesome acting.

Kim Ryberg This movie is absolutely incredible. The constant sense of dread is palpable, from its opening sequence depicting the desolation and dust of the Outback to the ominous train ride to the nightmare that is the Yabba at night. Truly a masterpiece of cinematography and storytelling, and the most real "horror" movie that you will ever see. If you've ever been to the outback, the desolation seems to press in you from all sides, because as Jock claims "there's nowhere else to go." Through showing John Grant's slow slide into depravity and terror, the director highlights the brutality in human nature and the price of various different vices. You can sense John turning from an intelligent, sensitive man into a careless brute, all the while fueled by enormous amounts of alcohol and peer pressure. Some of the most moving scenes put onto camera. For the animal lovers, yes, the kangaroo scene is brutal, yes, real kangaroos died, but the POINT of their death is to showcase the glee with which these men ruthlessly kill these animals. A descent into hell on Earth that leaves you spellbound and terrified. 10/10, a must see!

yajji Wake in Fright is about a part of Australia that seems to have been clean forgotten. It is a snapshot of a history and life that was swept under a rug, largely due to the colonisation of the country. Very few Australians will be familiar with the Outback aside from a vague familiarity, nor will they be aware of the threateningly machismo life portrayed in Wake in Fright, but it is a life that does exist, far beyond the fringes of the city, in the hauntingly beautiful Outback. The narrative is based on a book of the same time, about a schoolteacher from the city who finds himself in rural Australia doing teaching work for money. During his stay, he ends up in a landlocked, isolated town in the barren Australian desert colloquially called the "Yabba". The primitive way of life here initially floors the well-to-do citizen, but the town and strips back his polished city exterior. The undoing of a polite, cultured gentleman at the hands of derelict desert folk is actually one of the most disturbing aspects of this film. I kept thinking that this man (John is his name) was going to fall victim to a horrible act of violence by the group of eccentric, predominantly wasted townspeople. But instead, the film takes a different route, a far more disturbing one, and places John at the centre of the depravity. He does not fall victim to their behaviour, rather he participates in it until it ravages him almost to the point of no return. The shred of credibility and decency that John has left sees him flee the town. He has had a taste of a more simplistic, animalistic, impulsive existence, but the city life has not allowed him to fully amalgamate himself within this recklessly masculine crowd.The film is masterfully well made. The scrumptious, beautiful colours and settings of the Outback are so rich and bare that they almost become surreal. Director Ted Kotcheff isn't the first person to see the Outback as a foreboding and menacing place, but he has probably helped solidified this view in one of the most memorable ways. The performances are all excellent and you wouldn't know Donald Pleasance is a British veteran actor, because he has got the role of a grubby small town man down to a tee. In fact, all of the actors who portrayed the inhabitants of the Yabba really do seem like they were plucked off the street, they have a naturalism that compliments the film and makes it all the more frightening. Brian West, the cinematographer, deserves much credit too. The heat of the Australian summer is so palpable and raw that it feels as though you are there, in those ramshackle pubs, with sweat from your forehead dripping into your beer (which is almost never empty thanks to the "hospitable" locals). It is such a visceral, often menacing and gut-wrenching experience.I highly recommend this film. It really is incomparable to anything I've ever seen. It isn't really a commonplace thriller, but rather a drama about a way of life that has been forgotten, in favour of a more polished existence. Australia is a fascinating country because it is home to both the city and the rural, timeless outback... very contradictory realities. But sometimes when these very alternate ways of existence meet, chaos ensues. The result is intoxicating.