“HAVE A DRINK, MATE? HAVE A FIGHT, MATE? HAVE A TASTE OF DUST AND SWEAT, MATE? THERE’S NOTHING ELSE OUT HERE.
Raw and brutal in its depiction of Outback country drinking culture in the 1970s, Wake in Fright is an uncompromising landmark of Australian cinema from director Ted Kotcheff (First Blood).
John Grant (Gary Bond, Zulu), a bored schoolteacher working in the remote outback, stops overnight in the frontier mining town of Bundanyabba on his way back to Sydney for the Christmas holidays. After he loses all his savings in a bad gambling bet, Grant finds himself marooned and swept up in the vortex of a succession of hard-drinking, hard-living and crude men led by Doc (Donald Pleasence, Halloween) who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent as they are.
Ignored upon release, Wake in Fright has now been acclaimed as one of Australia’s most legendary, unique and horrifying contributions to cinema history by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Nick Cave, and is presented here in a definitive 4K restoration.
LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original lossless mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by director Ted Kotcheff and editor Anthony Buckley
• Audio commentary by Peter Galvin, author of The Making of Wake in Fright
• Return to the ‘Yabba, a featurette tracking down the film’s Broken Hill locations
• Take in Fright, an interview with director of photography Brian West
• Sounds of the Outback, a previously unreleased interview with sound editors Keith Palmer and Eddy Joseph
• The Cinema’s Great Squeaky Bald Git, an appreciation of actor Donald Pleasence by film historian Kim Newman
• The Filmmaker and the Film Buff, a discussion between Philippe Mora and Paul Harris
• Yer Mad, Ya Bastard!, an archive interview with director Ted Kotcheff
• Not Quite Hollywood, an archive interview with actor Jack Thompson
• Q&A with Ted Kotcheff from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival
• Audio interview with Ted Kotcheff, conducted by Paul Harris
• Audio interview with composer John Scott, conducted by music historian Daniel Schweiger
• Alternate scenes from Outback
• 2009 TV report on the rediscovery and restoration of Wake in Fright
• Who Needs Art?, a 1971 TV segment with behind-the-scenes footage
• Chips Rafferty obituary by Ken G. Hall
• US theatrical trailer and TV spot
• Foreign Visions of Local Stories, a trailer reel of Australian films helmed by overseas filmmakers
• Image gallery
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Jay Slater, Paul Lê and David Michael Brown plus archive materials
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jeff Marshall”
