{[['
']]}
']]}
Wake in Fright is my personal nightmare: being surrounded by a horde of degenerate men who drink, gamble, fight, dismiss women, and shoot animals for sport, with no ability to leave them behind. It’s under-seen because it includes footage from an actual kangaroo hunt, and though this movie assisted with making kangaroo hunting illegal in Australia, it should be warned that it’s real and it’s disturbing. But if you can stomach knowing that’s coming, Wake in Fright is a massively recommendable film if you’ve ever thought that The Hangover could be pretty interested as a horror concept instead of a comedic set-up. This one follows a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) who takes a rural post in Australia and immediately regrets it. After gambling away all his earnings in an attempt to get back to Sydney, he shacks up with the alpha male (Donald Pleasence) for a weekend of non-stop boozing, fighting, and fucking.
Though having some similar ruralism views, Wake in Fright is more frightening than Deliverance because these outback men are more identifiable to a larger population. They raise hell because there don’t seem to be any repercussions for boys behind badly. It’s also quite lovely to look at, most of the time. The orange desert expanse is lensed beautifully and the kangaroo hunt is vomitus. Pleasaence is quite horrifying as an educated brute that’s chosen nihilism and chaos and pushes the teacher to the brink. Wake in Fright is about men entrapping other men through heightened masculinity.
Wake in Fright premiered at Cannes but the print was lost for 30 years. And the negative traits of men in groups making the worst choices over and over are timeless. Director Ted Kotcheff made his debut with Fright and he went on to make hulkier anthems with Sylvester Stallone (First Blood) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Commando), but this is his masterpiece of identifiable and horrific masculinity that likely everyone has encountered on some scale. The main character here can’t seem to leave it, even though he tries. It’s like he’s in a sand globe.
Kotcheff later made Weekend at Bernie’s. And even though they’re hanging out with a dead guy, I’d rather kick it with those dudes than these.
Post a Comment