Wake In Fright (1971)

After the endless fun I've been having watching other Australian folk horror films like Celia, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Long Weekend, I was looking forward to today's film, Wake In Fright. At one point thought to be lost, forever doomed to be supplanted by an international TV edit of the film, it has now been unearthed and remastered in glorious HD. It certainly feels like a privilege to be on this side of history and able to appreciate films like this wherever and whenever we like, but I digress. 

When a schoolteacher, forced by the board to man the lonely outpost town of Tiboonda for the better part of the year, goes to visit his long-distance girlfriend in Sydney, events conspire to leave him stranded in a dirty outback town made up mostly of farmers, and those who mooch off the farmers. Residents of Tiboonda, lovingly referred to by the locals as "the Yabba," have to make up their own fun to pass the time, and so are certainly something of a wild bunch. Our well-to-do protagonist makes it clear that he considers them base and animalistic, not at all like himself, which makes it all the tastier when he becomes stranded in the town after losing all of his money at a game he had initially dismissed as 'simple-minded.' 

So he gets what's coming to him then, but it's initially still hard not to feel for the guy a bit. He wants to go live with his girlfriend in Sydney, and is bitter and upset about having to spend most of his working year in the middle of nowhere. And this was supposed to be his vacation, goddamn it! He gets a just a few weeks off the whole year and he's wasting them in some unkempt shithole. Furthermore, it becomes clear early on, as he continues to fantasize about his girl back in Sydney, that John is quite sexually frustrated and in dire need of an outlet. You really feel for the guy as he slips further and further away from her and falls deeper and deeper into the clutches of the Yabba, this stopover town from hell that just won't let him leave. 

John's foil is Doc Tydon, a disgraced, educated 'man of character,' as he calls himself, that sort of takes John under his wing after he makes a scene and "drinks (himself) under the table," something Doc is only too familiar with. You see, despite his promising career and the education that made it all possible, Doc is trapped here, just like John, only willingly. He's an alcoholic, and in Sydney, that made it impossible for him to practice. But here? In the Yabba? No one minds a bit, and certainly not enough to keep them from visiting him when they need something. Doc survives in the town with no money of his own, doing a service for the town for which they pay him with food and a never-ending supply of beer. 

He flies in the face of John's assumptions about the dirty rural types that populate Tiboonda's dark corners, and acts as a warning to John of where he might end up if he doesn't keep his carnal desires in check. Doc sleeps in a disgusting shack and lives life utterly on the edge, starved for stimulation. Yet, when he speaks, the man is a philosopher. There's a drunken sophistication to everything he says, and I find it all quite fascinating. His best moment comes when he delivers a takedown of the concept of civilization, a takedown that our hero only hears a few words of before passing out and drunkenly falling out of his chair, leaving Doc to give this very important speech, which sums all the themes of the story quite well, entirely to himself.

Yes, it's easy to tell that this is an adaptation of a novel, because it's just so damn rich and full of interesting characters. And it isn't concerned one bit with convention. No traditional structure, no genre concerns, no 'save the cat' moments: just pure storytelling muscle. Even characters with relatively little screentime, like the mysterious and enchanting Janette, are fascinating in their own right. She and John's failed rendezvous is incredibly awkward and off-putting, but an awesome spectacle nonetheless. The way Janette maintains that same unblinking expression throughout the whole humiliating and emasculating experience really sells it. 

And how about that chick in the reception area of that hotel John stays at in the beginning, who rubs water on her face and then, briefly, on her cleavage? Which reminds me, where are all the other women? What, is it just her and Janette in the whole town? If not, we never really see any evidence to the contrary. This is a film mostly concerned with dirty, sweaty, shirtless dudes that probably smell to high heaven, wrestling one another, shooting things, and of course, drinking beer. I would say it has a homoerotic subtext, but that raises the question of when subtext stops being subtext and just becomes... well, text. There are also a few hints of racism and discrimination on the part of the town, but it's incredibly subtle, only referenced in maybe three shots that are free of dialogue. Oh, and the whole thing is set during Christmas. Why not?

If all of this sounds confusing, then be assured I'm only doing an awful job of explaining it, as the film makes its points very well. The trouble comes with trying to cram it into any one box: while the film starts as something of a psychological drama mixed with a bit of Deliverance (in more ways than one) until you realize that it can't be a psychological horror film anymore once our 'hero' John has seemingly begun to enjoy himself and the debauchery he's become engaged in at the behest of his new 'buddies.' It becomes far more ecological than psychological, with us keeping John at a distance from then on out, until John has one new experience too many and feels his identity fracturing apart, bringing us right back full circle as it becomes clear there will be no happy ending for him. He fantasizes about his girl in Sydney, but now, Doc Tydon is there, rubbing his filth all over her immaculate body. Two parts of his personality that should never meet collide with one another, and he just... breaks. His glasses fall from his face and shatter on the ground, showing that he's officially off the grid and no longer a member of his beloved so-called society. It isn't long after that and he's gotten himself a gun, swearing that he'll make it to Sydney one way or the other. Still, things don't end up quite as bleak as I expected, though John ends up more or less in the same place as he started. I just couldn't help but think back to all those poor kangaroos and wonder if he didn't deserve far worse.

Oh yeah, so here's the thing about this film, and why it's extremely hard to recommend to just anybody: it contains actual footage of real kangaroos being hunted by licensed hunters. The filmmakers claim to have a mission to stop such hunting of the endangered kangaroo by shining a spotlight on it (though I suppose they didn't mention this to the hunters when they rode along) only most people won't care what their intentions were and simply won't wish to see actual murder of adorable animals no matter the circumstances. It's very graphic, as you get to see the impact of the bullet and the way the kangaroo reacts to it by trying to desperately hop away from the onset of cardiac arrest. The shots that contain the actors, including a shot of a truck running over a kangaroo, are presumably all fake, including a later scene of an actor slitting the throat of a kangaroo. Any cinephile could tell you that. But for normal, non-cinephiles (those freaks,) all they'll see is 'shot on a real licensed hunt' and assume the whole thing is real, which would make it all seem quite reckless and inexcusable on the part of the filmmakers. I respect their bold decision to show the world what kangaroo hunts like this really look like, with no concessions made to taste, but damn. This sequence will cause all but the most dedicated to switch off the film or avoid it altogether. 

Oh, and since I guess this is the part of the analysis where I complain about things, I want to say that the lack of subtitles on my Blu-ray copy was a huge annoyance, as I could barely make out anything that anyone was saying for the first stretch of the film, especially with Donald Pleasence's Doc spouting dense diatribes of nonsense in a thick Australian accent all over the place. By the end, however, I think I mostly had the hang of it, but it would have been nice to NOT have to rewind over and over again and keep the volume extremely loud throughout the whole film in order to be able to interpret it.

Speaking of sound, the score for the film is great and used rather effectively. It's somewhat sparse, but when it comes in, it's always pitch-perfect. I thought I had spotted some drippy Ondes Martenot amongst all the guitars, woodwinds, and other rustic instrumentation, and a little research after the fact proved me right, and boy do I love me some Ondes Martenot. Listen to Mark Wilkinson's masterful score for The Blood on Satan's Claw for more on what this instrument can do for horror films, but I digress. The sound design is strong as well, with the near ever-present buzzing of flies making a big atmospheric impression, especially given that it's most prominent in Doc's shack where the film's most uncomfortable scenes take place. 

The visual side of the presentation is strong as well, albeit in a grubby, low-budget kind of way. It has grit, both in terms of realism and a textured look, and it feels believable; almost documentary-like. It has a naked visual aesthetic that I can appreciate even as it upsets me. The editing, though, is the real standout. Dreams sequences, nightmare sequences, and sequences where time compresses as John gets progressively more hammered are all edited brilliantly and authoritatively, all while feeling effortless, almost invisible, and letting the story and its characters take center stage. They almost remind me of the unusual editing in Easy Rider, though a bit subtler here than there.

Performances are strong across the board, but it's hard to pay attention to anyone else whenever Donald Pleasence is onscreen. The dude kills it in every scene he's in, both in terms of inhabiting his character and bringing him to life, and in terms of his impressively natural Australian accent. There are little moments, like Doc putting his coat in the fridge during a drunken stupor, and then letting John pour beer over his head while he eagerly laps it up, that I simply have to believe was just Donald Pleasence improvising, but I could certainly be wrong. The most important thing to note when it comes to the cast and crew, though, is the ungodly amount of dust present in this picture. Clouds of the stuff, often envelop the camera so that we cut just as the shot becomes unusable. There's this one bit where Donald Pleasence walks out of a building and into the open, and he never even blinks as an advancing wall of airborne dirt smacks him right across the chops. If that had happened to me, I would have quit the movie right then and probably would have went to the hospital for emergency eye scraping, but Donald Pleasence keeps his cool and never even blinks, showing exactly why he made the big bucks. Kudos, is all I have to say and rest in peace.

Which pretty much sums up my overall thoughts on the film, minus the last part. It's an interesting narrative, almost folk horror in the sense that something like Deliverance is folk horror, that pits society or the modern 'civilized' man against nature, only for nature to make mere mince meat of him. Also, in keeping with other folk horror films we've talked about on this blog, there's a focus on base, carnal desires; the sort of natural impulses that society often tries and fails to stifle. And that's to say nothing of all the environmental destruction we see at the hands of these psycho hillbillies. But somehow, it just doesn't feel right to pin that label on it, all the same. Ditto psychological horror, or black comedy; anything. They all feel inadequate at explaining the thrust of Wake In Fright. What I can say about it with certainty, though, is that it's quite good, with its only sticking point being whether or not you're willing to watch real animals being hunted, animals that were going to be hunted whether the crew attended or not, but real animals dying onscreen in any case. If you can stomach it, however, I would say Wake In Fright is a film you have to check out. It's a unique gem in the world of horror cinema and presents further evidence that Australia has a long history of churning out effective examples of such material, using its wild, untamed outback to great effect in film after film.