If YouTube ever takes it off the internet, try archive.org
Wake in Fright" is the story of John Grant, a teacher at a remote school in the Outback and, in his own words, a bonded slave to Australia’s educational system. He has no choice but to teach to get out of debt, unless of course an unexpected windfall should make him rich. When the semester comes to an end, Grant stops at a local pub for a beer and a chat with the middle-aged barman before getting on a train for Bundanyabba, a mining town with little to recommend it unless you happen to live for beer and gambling.
Grant plans to fly to Sydney the next day and reunite with his girlfriend, of whom he has frequent visions from a time they spent on the beach long ago. But first he has a night to pass in this obscure place. Grant joins a large party of gamblers and, after early success makes him euphoric at the thought of finally having the funds to pay off his bond and escape his teaching obligations, proceeds to blow all his money, even the plane fare. He is stuck.
Too many horror movies depict travelers in the boondocks getting lost or stranded and running into creepy denizens who aren’t shy about putting a blade or a chainsaw to deadly use. It’s the hoariest cliché around. But not too many films present a scenario where the danger, if you should get stuck in a remote place, is to run into locals who are too friendly, if not downright overbearing in their insistence that you come and have a beer with them and enjoy their way of life. The locals in "Wake" in Fright are all too eager to talk and have a drink or two or fifteen with a bloke from out of town. They take it as an insult if you decline. They’ll even put you up.
A jovial alcoholic, Doc Tydon, who, inconceivably for most of us these days, lives without any money, drinks more beer than any five people you know combined. After Grant meets Tydon in a diner adjoining the gambling hall and expresses his caustic view of the town where he has just arrived, Tydon says it could be worse. Grant: "How?" Tydon: "The supply of beer could run out."
As a character in Sartre’s play "No Exit" puts it, hell is other people. Bundanyabba has no shortage of folks with time on their hands. It’s not pleasant to imagine where the passions of the hordes of young and middle-aged men might turn if endless quantities of beer don’t mollify them day after day, night after night. While hanging out with Tydon, Grant meets a number of other blokes who make Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee look urbane, drinks constantly, becomes involved with Tydon’s exceedingly odd wife, and goes with the mates on a kangaroo hunt in the bush which is by far the most disturbing - and disgusting - part of this exercise in psychological unease.
The movie is based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel of the same name, and I leave it up to you whether you first want to watch the movie or read the book - click here.
and wake in fright.'
AN OLD CURSE
P.S. "Wake in Fright" was also made into a TV miniseries - click here - but nothing compares to the original movie.
